Are your admin staff Super-Admin??

Jane Calligeros |Founder and CEO of CDM Plus

Admin staff play a very important role in Chronic Disease Management and our theme this week has been around the admin role in primary healthcare. A question I often get asked is “Why do we need to train Reception in Chronic Disease Management?”
Reception have one of the toughest jobs in a practice setting: the phone never stops ringing, there is always someone in font of them at the counter, clinical and other admin staff asking them to do or follow up on something, batching and processing Medicare, calling patients, booking appointments, scanning and the list goes on. It’s what my Nurse Educator used to nickname Emergency…Organised Chaos! If you can get the job done with all of that in the background, all the time without breaking a sweat then you have found your calling!!!
Reception also have a set of tasks to complete as part of Chronic Disease Management:

Booking & Confirming Appointments –

Checking patient eligibility – If you want to minimise rejections from Medicare you can’t skip this step. Checking patient eligibility by phone or through PRODA. Clinical staff need to know if a patient is eligible for a Care Plan, Review or Health Assessment. These items use valuable resources in a clinic (usually up to an hour with the Nurse/AHW and a double appointment with a GP).

Finalising visit & processing Medicare – This is a very important part of the day. Finalising a visit is like the end of day in a retail store with a cash register. If multiple item numbers are being processed and the correct notation isn’t entered it will get rejected. All visits need to be accounted for and depending on the clinic, batches sent to Medicare and then the processing of these batches the next day.

Booking the Next Appointment – The Next Appointment is an important process that can help reduce admin time, improve patient engagement and decrease non-attendance for Chronic Disease Management appointments.
Reception need help to become a super-admin. We have dedicated training, online modules and resources to help onboard and support your admin team: https://cdmplus.com.au