Earlier this year, Mike Caudle (Assistant Vice Preseident, Patient Financial Services, Carolinas Healthcare System) and Henry Ijams (Managing Director, PayStream Advisors) joined forces to present at the HFMA ANI in San Diego, CA. The topic of their presentation was Carolinas Healthcare System’s (CHS) innovative new patient portal. Mike’s story of how the CHS Online Billing Manager was developed and implemented peaked the interest and intrigue of the entire audience – myself included!

In fact, Henry was traversing the room with the microphone non-stop, trying to keep up with all of the audience questions and comments. Once again, CHS demonstrated its leadership through early adoption of innovative technology at the NCHFMA Summer Institute. Jim Burke (Director, Revenue Cycle Technology, CHS) and Chris Johnson (Vice President, Patient Financial Services, CHS) presented on Improving Patient Access Performance With Technology. I was most impressed by their commentary on the successes and challenges of implementing Palm Vein Scan (PVS) technology in Patient Access. A key takeaway for me was the weaknesses of fingerprint technology, in comparison to PVS technology. Fingerprinting carries a negative image in its association with criminal justice. The fingerprinting process poses sanitation challenges, whereas PVS is virtually “touch-free.” Above all, palm vein scan is more secure and reliable – just compare the False Reject Rate: PVS = 0.01% (1 of every 10,000 patients); Fingerprint = 1.5 - 3% (up to 3 of every 100 patients).

Last 5 posts by David Tourville

• Healthcare Document Management: Cutting costs and improving revenue cycle process efficiency - January 30th, 2008
• The healthcare enterprise and HCDI: Changing the way we think - November 21st, 2007
• Get to know the new HOV Services! - October 17th, 2007
• Patient Access Innovation | NCHFMA Summer Institute Review - September 7th, 2007
• NCHFMA Summer Institute Highlights - August 25th, 2007

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