1. 4 Simple Metrics to Improve Patient Satisfaction
With Your Patient Inquiry Responses

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Consumerism is radicalizing healthcare as
patients move from passive bystanders to active
decision makers.
As empowered consumers, your patients expect better
outcomes and value for their dollars spent on healthcare.
With these expectations comes a need for providers to
respond to the demand for higher levels of service inherent
in other consumer-friendly markets.
Responding to consumerism requires an emphasis on
meaningful patient interactions at every touchpoint. Most
interactions take place with your frontline staff at the front
desk or call center, and yet an often overlooked area of
improvement is fielding inbound patient inquiries at these
very locations.
How can you ensure that you are making each interaction
count? And if each touchpoint isn’t optimized, how can you
improve it?

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Why should you care?
Improving how your frontline interacts with your patient
population may seem like a trivial task with minimal
payoff, but a little extra work on can pay huge dividends in
the form of:
Improved patient satisfaction:
Patients will respond to your improvements with increased
satisfaction, a key metric for success in today’s value-based
healthcare model.
Increased employee productivity:
Employees benefit from your optimized inquiry response
processes with clear guidelines and metrics to meet.
Decreased cost to collect:
Major cost savings result from addressing inefficiences in
your staffing departments.
44% of US consumers take their
business elsewhere due to poor
customer service.1
1
“The multibillion dollar cost of poor customer service,” NewVoiceMedia

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How? Adopting and tracking metrics.
Much like any other optimization project, improving your
frontline inquiry response centers on adopting and tracking a
set of metrics that you can make actionable decisions from.
Prep yourself with baseline metrics.
Before you begin improving, you need a baseline to track
improvements against. If you have no comparison of the
before and after, any efforts to improve are unmeasurable.
We recommend tracking metrics for at least two
weeks before you take action on enhancing your
patient interactions.
Designate someone to field patient inquiries.
There should always be at least one employee responsible
for answering, and if unavailable, following up with patient
inquiries. Make sure that your this staff is recording call notes
in your system of record.This will help in setting a baseline
for your metrics.
BonusTip:
Use a rollover telephone line that redirects calls to other
lines in your office if the main line is occupied so your
patients never receive a busy signal.

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Metric 1: Response Time
The development of technologies like social media has
changed consumer expectations of response time. As such,
patients expect multiple ways to contact your office(s) with
lightning fast response times.
Ask yourself:
• How many channels can patients use for an inquiry into
your office (telephone, digitally, etc.)?
• On average, how long does it take you to respond to a
patient inquiry on each of your channels?
We recommend having a minimum of two
channels that your patients can use to submit
an inquiry: a phone line and a HIPAA compliant
digital channel.
Prompt response times to patient inquiries will boost patient
satisfaction rates as expectations for a higher level of patient
service are met.
Did you know?
When asking about a product or service, 66% of
consumers expect a response to their inquiry on the
same day, and over 40% expect a reply within the hour.2
2
“Inaugural Customer Expectations Survey 2014,” LithiumTechnologies
The recommended benchmark for each channel is:
• 24 hours for all digital communications
• 1 hour for phone calls during business hours,
with up to 24 hours to answer voicemails and
non-business hour calls

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Metric 2: Messages to Escalate
The work does not stop once a single message has been
answered. Although you should strive to resolve the question
on the first communication, that isn’t always possible.
When a patient inquiry requires back and forth with your
office, you should set an escalation limit at which the inquiry
is passed on to higher level staff.
We recommend four back and forth messages
with a patient before the inquiry is escalated.
Escalation improves patient satisfaction by allowing you to
get your patients the answers they need faster. Letting your
employees focus on the right tasks improves productivity
and avoids the cost of inefficient communications.

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Metric 3: Turnaround Time
While response time measures how fast you get back to the
patient, an equally important metric is how long it takes to
solve a patient problem.Turnaround time is the time it takes
you to get the answer to the patient.
Each patient inquiry is unique, yet you can set a
benchmark to improve the flow of information in
your office.
Turnaround time matters, as the faster you can deliver the
required information to your patients, the more likely they
are to be satisfied with your service.
It is important to note that consumers rate being able to
reach someone quickly above having their issue resolved
quickly, so focus first on improving response time3
.
Here are some benchmarks to get your own metric
thresholds established:
• The maximum time to keep a patient on the
phone is five minutes, after which you should let
the patient know you will call them back with a
response within 24 hours.
• If you have cannot provide an answer within
two days, escalate the problem.*
*Note: Some answers may take longer due to reliance on intermediary
parties (e.g. insurance companies). In this instance, it is best to develop
a unique threshold for these types of extended wait situations.
3
”Avaya Consumer Preference Report 2011,” Avaya

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BonusTip:
Patients may phone in with inquiries your frontline staff
aren’t trained to handle. Ask your office’s doctors and
nurses to provide some of the most common questions
they receive so your staff yielding patient phone calls
are always prepared.
Metric 4: Frequently Asked Questions
Your patients often ask the same questions repeatedly and
your staff spends unneeded time searching for the answers,
a situation that can be easily avoided.
Using the data you tracked, set up groups of questions that
patients most often ask using the attached spreadsheet*. As
an example, you could file each question into categories like
the following:
• Question about a Specific Charge
• Question about Duplicate Charges/Bill
• Inquire About Missing Payments
• Ask an Insurance Question
• Request an Itemized Bill
• Other
Once you have these groups, prepare talk tracks for your staff
and next steps for each category to speed up response time
and improve employee productivity.
Analyzing questions that patients often ask can
help you find inefficiencies in other processes. For
instance, if you keep getting questions around
specific charges, it may be a strong indicator that
your statement billing descriptors are confusing.
*The spreadsheet is attached to this document. Hint: you can change the
headers to reflect your question types once you have identified them.

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In Summary...
Now more than ever, serving your patient population is a
demanding task as healthcare shifts. With these simple and
easy to implement metrics, you can begin to address that
challenge with actionable insights and next steps.
BonusTips:
1. Set up a reward system for staff who improve their
results after you begin tracking metrics.The reward
incentive will motivate employees and further drive up
your employee productivity.
2. Implement a simple patient survey (e.g. a survey by
email) after each inquiry is closed to obtain feedback on
how your communications improvements are perceived
by patients.

10. 5 Quick HIPAA
Compliance Tasks You
Can Try Today

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Can you imagine a few copiers costing you $1.2
million dollars?
That’s the exact situation Affinity Health Plan, Inc. found
themselves in after they returned photocopiers to a leasing
agent without erasing the protected health information (also
referred to as PHI for short) on the copier hard drives1
. In
fact, the average cost of a data breach for today’s healthcare
organizations is estimated to be more than $2.1 million,
with each record potentially earning a $50,000 fine2,3
.
Even with all the recent breaches, 40% of providers stated
that “the recent large scale health data breaches did not
affect their own privacy or security measures”4
.This is
counterintuitive, as more breaches should give rise to
stricter compliance measures.
To address HIPAA complaince, providers need to foster
an environment where security and compliance are top of
mind.The approach you take with your employees needs to
go beyond training to creating and maintaining a “culture of
HIPAA compliance”.
1
“HHS Settles with Health Plan in Photocopier Breach Case,” U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, HHS.gov
2
“Fifth Annual Benchmark Study on Privacy & Security of Healthcare Data,” Presented by Ponemon Institute, May 2015
3
“HIPAA Violations and Enforcement,” American Medical Association, Ama-assn.org
4
“What areTop HIPAA Compliance Concerns, Obstacles?,” HealthItSecurity.com
While HIPAA requires extensive measures for compliance,
there are easy steps you can take everyday to ensure you
have a culture of compliance. In this article, you’ll find an
explanation of the following five tips for creating your own
compliance focused culture.
Create a HIPAA task force with one employee from each
department.
Make security an open conversation.
Keep your HIPAA policies and procedures visible for all
employees.
Conduct regular assessments of all policies, no matter
how small.
Make HIPAA fun.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

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1. Create a HIPAA task force with one employee
from each department.
Every provider must have at least named one Security
Officer for HIPAA compliance, but we recommend creating a
HIPAA task force with one employee from each department.
This will ensure that there are more employees in your
office who are HIPAA experts and can continually evaluate
if HIPAA compliant policies are being followed within each
department. A task force with one person from each of your
departments also adds comfort for your employees to ask
questions and learn from a peer.

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2. Make security an open conversation.
The staggering statistic to the right sheds light on the fact
that providers aren’t making security an ongoing, everyday
conversation.You should provide your staff with ongoing
content to keep the security conversation alive.
2b. Create and distribute a monthly newsletter on
HIPAA compliance and security.
A monthly HIPAA compliance and security newsletter to all
of your employees will provide continuous insights and help
in the documentation of a culture of compliance. Include
information on new HIPAA laws, rulings, examples of
breaches, and general security updates. A great resource for
this is The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) Breach Portal, which
describes recent breaches and the associated fines.
2a. Offer a channel for employees to submit HIPAA
questions and discuss in an open forum.
Employees in your organization may be reluctant to ask
HIPAA related questions in the open or to their peers for
fear of being ridiculed. Offering a way for your employees
to submit HIPAA questions allows them to candidly ask any
question they may have in mind and further your compliant
culture. Make sure to discuss the answers in a public forum
where other employees can learn from the answers.
Only 54% of providers talk about
security in their board meetings, and
that is only on request.5
5
“Addressing Healthcare Cybersecurity Strategically,” Symantec Corporation and HIMSS Analytics, 2016

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3. Keep your HIPAA policies and procedures
visible for all employees.
While your Compliance Officer and/or task force is fully
responsible for keeping your HIPAA policies at top of mind,
it’s just as critical to make sure all of your employees are
constantly exposed as well. Whether that means digitizing
your policies and putting them online or making posters for
the break room, this small step can make HIPAA compliance
synonymous with your culture.
4. Conduct regular assessments of all policies,
no matter how small.
Many providers focus on the largest tasks at hand when
conducting internal HIPAA assessments, however, you
should not limit yourself to just a few major assessments.
Instead, create a culture where everyone is responsible for
evaluating policies. For instance, if someone goes to the
bathroom and leaves their computer screen unlocked, stick
a “HIPAA Audited” post-it on their screen to drive corrective
action and raise awareness of everyday HIPAA violations.

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5. Make HIPAA fun.
HIPAA compliance may seem dry and boring, but it doesn’t
have to be. By making HIPAA fun, you can actively engage
your employees while training and furthering your HIPAA
compliance documentation. For instance, you could:
5b. Play “Spot the Spear Phishing”
Spear Phishing is an e-mail fraud attempt that targets a
specific organization, seeking unauthorized access to your
confidential data by masking the identity of the sender as an
individual or organization the target knows.This fraud is a
cause for concern, as “spear phishing campaigns targeting
employees increased 55% in 2015”6
.
Here at Patientco, we like to play a game called “Spot the
Spear Phishing,” in which we analyze actual spear phishing
attempts we’ve received.Try it out with your staff!
Click here to download “Spot the Spear Phishing.”
5a. Bring in Security Experts
Reach out into your network and find someone who can
speak to security and HIPAA compliance.Take the time to
buy your employee’s lunch, have the speaker come in, and
facilitate a presentation and open discussion. Ask your
employees to each prepare one question they have had on
their mind about HIPAA compliance.
6
“2016 Internet SecurityThreat Report” Symantec Corporation, 2016

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For more great healthcare content, visit our blog at:
www.Patientco.com/category/blog/

17. www.Patientco.com
What did Jane do wrong?
Let’s take a step back, as this email looks perfectly normal:
• It’s “from” someone in an authority position.
• It’s “from” someone Jane works with on a daily basis.
• It’s a reasonable request.
• It’s brief, but that’s also because it was “Sent from my iPhone.”
• The user icon matches up.
Continue onto page 2 to see the warning signs in this email.
Spot the Spear Phishing | Page 1
Spot the Spear Phishing
What is Spear Phishing?:
Spear Phishing is an e-mail fraud attempt that targets a specific organization, seeking unauthorized access
to your confidential data by masking the identity of the sender as an individual or organization the target
knows.This fraud is a cause for concern, as “spear phishing campaigns targeting employees increased 55%
in 2015”6
. In this exercise, we will help you to identify signs of a spear phishing attack and explain the right
steps to defend yourself.
Scenario:
Jane, who is the Staff Accountant at American Hospital, received this email from John Jones, the CEO of
American Hospital. Jane followed protocol by getting the beneficiary information and then the required
funds approval from two hiring managers before sending the wire transfer.

18. Spot the Spear Phishing
What are the spear phishing warning signs?
• First, the email is from “John.Jones@AmericanHealth.com”, but the reply-to email is different*.
• The sender, who is friendly with Jane, didn’t use her name.
• It’s in a different font and color than the normal font.
While not using Jane’s name and being in a different font is not always an indication of spear phishing, the
different reply-to email is a major red flag. If Jane had taken the time to carefully inspect the reply-to name,
she would have immediately recognized the attempt for what it was.
*On Gmail you can see this information (called “Original Message Headers”) by clicking on the down arrow button to the right of
the user icon (the image above) or by clicking the drop down arrow on the right and selecting “Show original.”To see the same on
Outlook, follow the directions at this link.
What are the key takeaways?
• Always check the “from” email and “reply-to” email*. If there are any differences between them, there is
likely a problem.You can also check the original message text to confirm**. Be sure to thoroughly inspect
that the email address, as spear phishers commonly use slight misspellings to throw recipients off, like:
John.Jones@AmeriicanHealth.com - note the double “i.”
• If you are unsure about a request, always reach out through a different verified channel.Try a different
email address for that person. Call or text them. Message them through your work chat interface.
Whatever means you use, make sure to confirm with the supposed sender that he or she did indeed send
that email request.
For more great examples of Spear Phishing, visit this link.
www.Patientco.comSpot the Spear Phishing | Page 2