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A Culture of Service: Embracing Outpatient Outreach

Contributing Lab Leaders: Charles Buck, Esq; Vicky McClain; Bob King; Leo Serrano, FACHE, DLM (ASCP); John David Nolen, MD, PhD; and John Marzinzik

A Culture of Service: Embracing Outpatient Outreach
OPERATIONAL

Article highlights:

  • Successful outpatient outreach requires a commitment to culture change within hospital labs
  • Shifting to a client services mindset will help labs succeed at outpatient outreach and protect their futures
  • Everyone must prioritize outpatient outreach—from the C-suite to IT administrators to lab couriers—for effectively managing populations

In The Critical Importance of Outreach, we introduced the topic of lab outreach and how critically important it is to population health. Now, we’ll look closely at the rich opportunity outpatient outreach presents and how labs can best embrace it.

Let’s start where we left off, by examining in greater detail why a culture change inside the lab is a necessary prerequisite to successful outreach.

Culture Shock

 

When hospital labs extend their services to outpatient practices, it can feel a little like encountering a whole new culture. Laboratorians who had been focused exclusively on inpatient and hospital work may find themselves confused and uncertain. Many may question why outreach is even necessary. This fundamental resistance must be countered if outreach is to be successful.

Leo Serrano, FACHE, DLM (ASCP)

Clinical and Operational Consultant

Firstpath, LLC

To Serve and Protect

 

People who are set in their ways can still be convinced … but you have to find the right people.

Start with those most amenable to change. Explain how, because of outreach, community physicians and their patients are now the lab’s customers. Accordingly, everyone at the lab must adopt a customer service mentality in everything they do.

Click below to learn how your lab can serve and protect.

Your lab can
serve physicians by …

  • Talking to everyone in the physician’s office and getting to know them personally
  • Attending tumor boards and conferences
  • Promoting your stat tests—which many commercial labs can’t provide
  • Developing test-ordering algorithms to facilitate informed decision making
  • Encouraging pathologists to conduct face-to-face clinical consults
  • Putting phlebotomists inside community practices for on-site blood draws
  • Helping return to care patients who have been lost to follow-up

Your lab can
serve patients by …

  • Understanding their need to have lab work done at convenient times—before and after normal business hours
  • Opening your lab earlier than the typical 8:00 am start
  • Scheduling more staff to cover the second shift (3:00 pm to 11:00 pm)
  • Providing safe, fast, and convenient access to a separate lab outside of the hospital

Being flexible and service-oriented in these ways can help protect against …

  • Poor patient outcomes
  • Loss of patient data
  • Loss of revenue to competing commercial labs
  • Unnecessary test ordering
  • Penalties from payers for patient re-hospitalization

A culture shift to a customer-service, outreach mentality can protect your lab’s future

John Marzinzik

President and CEO

Frisbie Memorial Hospital

Adjust your Margin Mindset

 

The culture shift needs to extend all the way up to the C-suite. As touched upon in The Critical Importance of Lab Outreach, margins for outpatient services will be smaller than those for inpatient. Payers will demand rates consistent with their national lab fee schedules. Your expectations should therefore be realistic.

Of course, profit can be made. But the true value in outpatient outreach lies in greater control of post-discharge testing and consistency of patient data—with the ensuing benefits both can bring to population health management.

Leo Serrano, FACHE, DLM (ASCP)

Clinical and Operational Consultant

Firstpath, LLC

Infrastructure Supports Culture

 

A dedicated business infrastructure is indispensable to successful outpatient outreach. This should include processes and personnel to:

  • Handle a higher volume of incoming phone calls

  • Answer customer questions

  • Move specimens efficiently through the lab

  • Meet ongoing client service demands

  • Support a solid courier system

  • Fulfill pre- and post-analytical needs

  • Set fee structures consistent with outpatient reimbursement realities

  • Bill customers accurately and on a timely basis

IT infrastructure is especially important, as there is a critical need to prioritize interfacing with multiple physician offices. Likewise, labs must seamlessly integrate data from disparate electronic medical records (EMRs). To ensure these outreach needs receive their proper due, your lab must be able to exert control over IT priorities.

Bob King

President

The Medical Foundation

Start with a Person and a Plan

 

Outreach culture will start to come alive in your lab once you have the right person and the right plan in place.

The person is your lab outreach manager, who will take charge of the project and own all aspects of it. That person should have:

  • Strong lab business acumen

  • Solid relationships with multiple community physicians

  • Skills to develop those physicians into customers

  • An understanding of the finer details of outreach management

The plan is the scope of your startup. How many practices are you going to target for outreach? What amount of resources will you allocate to the effort? You don’t have to overreach; a modest start is a perfectly viable option.

Target a select group of community physicians with whom you already have strong relationships. Utilize existing capacity within your lab to begin serving their needs. Understand you’re going to make mistakes: allow them to happen, learn from them, and then keep moving forward.

Vicky McClain

Director, Laboratory Services

Huntsville Hospital

Your Cultural Ambassadors

 

Outreach marketing is an extensive topic covered in a LabLeaders Webinar Series presentation by the Huntsville Hospital outreach team. Now, we would like to draw your attention to two of the most authentic marketers in your lab: your couriers and phlebotomists.

Couriers interact with community physicians and their staff every day. They know before anyone else what the buzz is inside a practice. Is the practice considering a new EMR? Are they unhappy with service they’re getting from another lab? Your couriers transit more than just specimens and test results: they convey key strategic information that can strengthen your outreach efforts. And they represent your lab on a daily basis—so make sure they’re up to the task.

Phlebotomists too, whether they’re located in patient service centers or physician’s offices, have their fingers on the pulse of what’s going on in the community. Coach them well and rely on them to keep you connected.

No Time to Wait

 

Our Lab Leaders stress the urgency of embarking on outpatient outreach sooner rather than later. Initiating the necessary cultural changes may seem daunting today, but can be richly rewarding tomorrow when you have the expanded data sets in hand to drive better outcomes for patient populations.

Leo Serrano, FACHE, DLM (ASCP)

Clinical and Operational Consultant

Firstpath, LLC

Contributing Lab Leaders

Charles Buck, Esq

President, Healthcare Compliance Attorney

McDermott, Will & Emery

Vicky McClain

Director, Laboratory Services

Huntsville Hospital

Bob King

President

The Medical Foundation

Leo Serrano, FACHE, DLM (ASCP)

Clinical and Operational Consultant

Firstpath, LLC

John David Nolen, MD, PhD

Clinical Pathologist

Children's Mercy Hospital

John Marzinzik

President and CEO

Frisbie Memorial Hospital

 

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