Administrators: How do you keep track of calls?

RHEMT406

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Just curious if anyone cares to share their process for keeping calls. I am just trying to see if there is a more efficient method than what we are doing. We are volunteer and quite antiquated with practice. I am looking to modernize things. I know they say don't fix what isn't broken....but what we are doing seems pretty broken to me.

Basically, when get dispatched to a call,and clear that call with dispatch, our times get emailed to us.
When we return to the station, we fill out a binder with the incident number, patient's initials, age, complaint, disposition, and crew.

Then we fill out a cover sheet with much of the same information above and staple the hospital facesheet to the cover sheet. The chart gets submitted electronically, and this paper bundle is put in the drawer for pre-billing look-over.

Issues with our current system: care providers forget to fill out the book or paper. Then they don't submit the chart on time. So billing has no idea the call even exists. I don't really have a reliable way to coordinate with dispatch to see a list of dispatched calls for the week.

Any advice?
 
I take it theres no money, right? There are plenty of million dollar solutions, but i’m Guessing a volly squad still keeping records isn’t able or willing to pony up for a state of the art edispatch setup.

You need someone who can be held accountable(disciplined, fired, beaten with a broom handle) to keep a log of all calls(even just time of dispatch and address would be a start). Once you have that, you’ll need to start holding the crews accountable by whatever mechanism is available to a volly squad, including termination/disassociation. Once your billing goes up, you can start campaigning for some of those funds to modernize your system.

This is a tough nut to crack on the cheap. When you have plenty of money, it’s easy. My full time job has billing evaluators on duty like 16hrs a day. All they do is stalk the dispatch board, harass crews for not completing reports in what they consider a timely manner(the fact that their definition differs with the state regulation I guess is irrelevant, but I digress) and then review them for completeness, kicking them back for further documentation if they are lacking. After that, they go to billing proper. We’re billing most calls the day they happen, with a dramtically improved reimbursement rate over the previous method, but its a million dollar solution.
 
Google sheets or excel would go a long way here. You can likely even set up the email to automatically populate data
 
Basically, when get dispatched to a call,and clear that call with dispatch, our times get emailed to us.
When we return to the station, we fill out a binder with the incident number, patient's initials, age, complaint, disposition, and crew.
so this binder is in a semi-public location, accessible to all employees, and you lists patient identifiable information in it? sounds like a potential for a HIPAA violation.
Issues with our current system: care providers forget to fill out the book or paper. Then they don't submit the chart on time. So billing has no idea the call even exists. I don't really have a reliable way to coordinate with dispatch to see a list of dispatched calls for the week.

Any advice?
Seems to me there are a couple things you need:
1) a way to get a report of all call that dispatch sends you.
2) a new documentation method (paper charts are soooo 20th century)
3) a way for prebilling to review the chart before it goes to billing, as well a way to correlate every call dispatch sends to you to a paper chart, and make sure every call gets a chart.

starting with 1: I'm assuming your an administrator of the EMS agency, so you should schedule a meeting with the chief of the agency that handles dispatch (typically police, but whomever it is). If the dispatch center uses a CAD system (and most do), then they can run a report on every EMS call that you are dispatched to. that report should have a unique identifying number on it, which should go on your documentation, so you can correlate both calls (the dispatch call and the EMS one). This should be able to be done on a weekly basis; the hardest part will be the initial set up, but once the criteria are set, it should be easy to run the same report against the CAD database every time.

2) upgrade from paper charts. I know change is tough, but you can do so much more, from an administrative point of view, with electronic charts compared to paper ones. invest in toughbooks, your billing department will love you when they don't need to translate chicken scratch. Billing also gets processed faster, since you don't need to worry about delivering the paper. And your prebilling person can review and approve or send back with QA comments.

3) see 1 and 2.

Change is tough, especially for older volunteers who would go back to the horse and buggy days if they could. And they WILL fight you on it. been there, done that. But when billing numbers go up, you bring in more revenue, and you can invest more on infrastructure.

you can do it on the cheap, or you can do it right. it's very hard to do both.
 
Electronic charts is your answer. Talk to your billing company. As the good Doctor said, epcrs make everyone's life easier. My billing company gave us toughbooks when we made the change
 
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