Eligibility Checks – Critical Task or a Hero’s Journey?

Your front desk team has a lot on their plate. They are constantly juggling phones, patients, and paperwork. Their “to do” list often grows faster than they can check things off.

In this environment, it can be easy for the team to feel like the fun police, constantly saying no or enforcing rules. It’s also an environment where tasks get pushed off or overlooked.

There is one job you want them to happily embrace, and never put off: checking eligibility.

If the front desk team gets behind on eligibility checks, or skips them altogether, you are probably losing money.

There are tons of tools for various EMRs that are making this task easier, but it still requires time and attention to detail in a position where time to complete a focused task can be hard to come by.

So what do you do? Make your front desk team the hero of this story. Help them see the role they play in the larger narrative, and show them how prioritizing this task saves them time and effort in the future.

For instance, when eligibility checks fall by the wayside, the team will end up spending time fixing the inevitable mistakes. This is costly both time-wise and financially.

Best case scenario: slower payments for the practice messes up cash flow and wastes staff’s time.

Worst case scenario: ZERO payment because your office didn’t catch insurance changes at the time of visit and now your billing team can’t get in touch with the patient to file the claim.

Just a quick “How are things going with eligibility?” should do the trick. If the answer isn’t what you hope for, figure out what resources your team needs to succeed. Then ask your billing team to lead a training.

Not only will your front desk benefit from the skills, they will also see firsthand how critical their roles are to the success of the practice. Your support will make a real difference to how this is handled.

The practices that are most successful with this don’t just add eligibility checks as a regular task, they empower their front desk team to be the hero.

When eligibility checks are framed as a hero’s journey, it’s much easier to get your team into a smooth rhythm of completing them and protects you from losing out on money you’ve worked hard for.