Suggestion Box

YOUR OPINION COUNTS!

This tool is a virtual Suggestion Box for FPBO Staff to be able to submit questions or feedback. Questions and the responses will be listed under the 'Recent Submitted Questions/Feedback and Responses' section below. If you want someone to contact you feel free to include your extension.

Submit a Question or Provide Feedback

Recent Submitted Questions/Feedback and Responses

1. QUESTION:
   With parking being like it is, can employee parking be striped? Customers have all the front parking but are parking in the employee lot. Customer parking is empty and we are driving around in circles looking for parking and you see customers parking in our spots. Or Maybe big signs that says customer parking over here.

   Answer: Administration has talked to the County about the parking problems several times since the new spaces were created and have been unable to get a commitment from them to make any changes. We will continue these discussions and will send a notification to our employees if any changes are going to be made.

2. QUESTION:
   I would like to make a suggestion for positions that become available in our FPBO department. I came from 2 large Hospitals that when a position became available in our department the admin would announce these positions by email and continue if needed. It was an easier way for us to be aware of positions instead of looking on line as opportunities could be passed up. It’s definitely great for those who wanted to stay in the same department. Please let us know if this might be something we’re able to do!! Thank you as always for looking into our suggestions.

   Answer: Administration has committed to start posting all FPBO open positions on the office bulletin boards. Please watch for a notification to go out to all employees when the first listing are posted.

3. SUGGESTION:
   I have a suggestion to help with the use of space, the front parking lot has. I think it would be a great idea to have the spaces repainted.

   Answer: Thank you for your suggestion. Administration feels this is needed as well and has asked the county to restriped the parking lot as part of the remodeling process. The county has submitted a maintenance work order for the immediate restriping of the dedicated spaces for the FPBO. The county has previously stated they do not intend to restripe the entire lot until the end of the construction project. The timing of this restripe has not been clarified to us as yet.

4. SUGGESTION:
   I think as a birthday present, we should be allowed to wear jeans on our birthday. :)
   Please take my suggestion into consideration it would be a nice little gift to us employees. I have a few coworkers that have been here for 15+ and they said years ago they used to be allowed to wear jeans on their birthday. I’m just wondering why this was taken away. Thank you!

   Answer: Thank you for your suggestion regarding birthday jean days. One of the key reasons we initiated “Friday jeans day” was to provide many (52) days a year to wear jeans and at the same time allow us to eliminate a few individual events, like birthdays and anniversary celebrations, that were difficult to manage consistently. Birthdays and anniversaries are special days and we support several current practices to celebrate and make the day special. For these reasons we have decided not to re-start the birthday jeans day practice.

5. SUGGESTION:
   There has been a lot of discussion around the office about a possible fair market wage adjustment as the cost of living continues to rise and the FBPO is becoming ever more efficient post Epic implementation. As this is a popular subject amongst most or all employees, I was hoping you can formally address this matter, so we are better informed as to what we can expect in the coming months.

   Answer:  : Thank you for your inquiry. We checked with Human Resources and a Fair Market Wage Adjustment is not scheduled for our office this fiscal year which ends June 30, 2015.

6. SUGGESTION:
   My suggestion to help the efficiency of our workflow would be to have the Billers complete the claims that they’re billing to the insurance completely, including follow-up. There have been cases when all the charges that occur during a patient’s date of service that are not all billed. Some charges are billed to the insurance and others are not and these accounts end-up going to Self-Pay unnecessarily. When this happens, our A/R days are higher than they need to be and sometimes these charges end-up not being able to be billed because it may be past the timely filing limit by the time it gets to the Self-Pay WQ. I think this issue can be fixed if the Biller can be encouraged to set-up ticklers for 30 days or so to follow-up on all of their accounts after their initial access to that account to ensure that all the charges of that particular claim are billed. I believe that this would decrease our A/R days, decrease the amount of patient complaints that are received in the Self-Pay department regarding their insurance not being billed and lessen the amount of accounts that have to be written-off for untimely filing.

   Answer:  : Some of the issues of charges going to Self-Pay instead of the insurance are a result of the Benefit Plans not being set up completely & a biller may or may not ever work that account. We do have a report that should be catching Self-Pay balances where a patient has insurance in their registration. If you can provide us with an example account, we can determine if it hit that report.

   We also have a “Retro” WQ that identifies if the Payor/Plan in registration is changed & there are charges in the previous coverage.

   We will explore this further to see if something else can be done to catch these sooner than the SP WQ. I am checking with the Self Pay Manager & Supervisor as they are familiar with the reports I’ve mentioned & may have some thoughts on how we can work these more effectively.

7. SUGGESTION:
   When a case is completed, in the Package bill Dept, we take all of the documentation that has been collected from various sources and put it into a batch envelope to be stored at the warehouse by the year completed. I believe it would be beneficial if, with our new on-base system, we created a cover sheet for those packets and scanned them into the system. We could create a folder in on-base for "Package Bill Department completed cases" and keep copies of each completed case there. That way if there ever an audit we would have all of the documentation associated with the case available in the system.

   Benefits:
   1. This would save on manpower to retrieve the case from the warehouse.
   2. Reduce the amount of space and monthly cost needed in the warehouse for storage.
   3. We would also not be using the batch envelopes or the boxes to store them, which would save money in office supplies as well.

   Answer: We are in agreement that your suggestion of scanning package documents would help reduce supply ordering of files as well as storage. Your suggestion also sparked a conversation regarding the possibly creating an entirely paperless workflow for PB.

   Because your suggestion can be implemented more quickly than changing current workflows, we will do some exploring on how this information can be referenced within OnBase for searching if needed. We will be working with Karen and the FPBO scanning team to try to set up a process for this.

   Question:
   I was wondering if it would be possible to change the items in our vending machine for healthier choices. Maybe we could change out the candy/chip machine for a refrigerated machine that could have items like fruit, yogurt, sandwiches or other items like that?

   Answer:
   We've scheduled a meeting with our vendor to review what other health options they have available, but you probably won't see any changes for a few weeks. It may not be possible to add or change the type of vending machines we currently have as we'd look at these options when we moved and the current machines are all our lease allows.

8. SUGGESTION:
   We are here to do a job and when we run out of toner and printing paper its becomes difficult to preform our jobs. If the ball has been drop in one area it would be nice if someone could make a trip to the store and pick up supplies until a delivery can be made. This would also help so people don’t have to run all over the office looking for supplies.

   Answer:
   Thank you for your suggestion regarding paper and toner supply. We agree with your concerns and are reorganizing the order process and supply cabinet to better manage this important area. As you may know, we recently hired a third admin to help us cover all of our support functions more effectively. To that end, Jennifer is currently being trained to own the supply order process.