How St. Croix Hospice Automated its Patient Intake Process

Summary

As with many post-acute providers across the country, the process to complete patient intake involves many manual steps and can ultimately overwhelm entire teams. St. Croix Hospice recognized this problem at its facilities and made a strategic move to add automated workflows to its patient intake process. With the ultimate goal of providing the fastest response to incoming patients seeking end-of-life care. St. Croix Hospice turned to technology to optimize its processes and stay ahead of the curve.

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The Challenge

St. Croix Hospice’s average patient census was increasing beyond 1000 patients a month, a substantial majority of whom constituted Medicare beneficiaries. With 60-80 referrals on a daily basis, manually verifying insurance information for each patient one-by-one would have slowed down admissions.

This meant that eligibility verification was a crucial cross-departmental process that required optimization so that the Intake team could admit patients for care without any unnecessary delay.

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Solution

In collaboration with Element5, St. Croix Hospice implemented a pre-built workflow utilizing artificial intelligence, RPA, intelligent reporting, and analytics to automate the Intake team’s eligibility response process. This automation efficiently filters patient records, verifies information against the latest data, and updates the EHR with supporting documentation via the clearing house. The Intake team gains visibility through a customized automation hub, enabling them to monitor, intervene manually if needed, and ensure optimal execution.

The automated Intake eligibility process yielded immediate benefits, seamlessly integrating into the workflow. It notably enhanced accuracy and efficiency, resulting in faster response times for patient care needs. Staff resources are now allocated more effectively to meet patient requirements.