By Jay Juffre
I am at the age now where health is a key priority in my life. My one Grandfather lived to 102, the other one passed away shortly after his retirement. I am betting that I will be somewhere in between although I would prefer the former’s longevity. Regardless, my routine checkups sometimes lead to referrals either within the health system or to an outside physician. When this happens, I inevitably, am asked to sign the HIPAA release form. This, I am told, is to allow them to pass all my information along to the doctor I will be seeing next. Sometimes this works out flawlessly. I show up for the appointment and the staff knows exactly why I am there and why they are seeing me. They have pulled my medical information and things go smoothly. Other times I question if the referring office even bothered to let them know I was coming. Bottom line is this, whenever you are transferring patients from one department or practice to another, there is a tremendous opportunity to not only impress them, but also to improve patient care and experience. Us non-medical professionals will always do our best to bring people up to speed on what is going on, but wouldn’t it be much easier if the actual folks with the degrees had that conversation? Once you have the HIPAA release form authorized, use it. We are all busy, but training your team to let another team know not only who is being sent to them, but more importantly why is the key. When this does not happen, patients are left feeling alienated and usually will lay blame on the referring physician or health system. Inevitably there will be a satisfaction survey in their inbox and how they fill it out will have nothing to do with the care they received. Do right by your patients, practice warm transfers.
Jay Juffre is Executive Vice President and Chief of Staff, ImageFIRST. For more information on ImageFIRST, call 1-800-932-7472 or visit www.imagefirst.com.
