Partnership Streamlines Submission Of Preadmission Screening Forms
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Move helps minimize workflow disruption and maximize efficiencies in Virginia.
The state of Virginia and Curaspan have announced a partnership to automate the submission of Preadmission Screenings (PAS), including the lengthy Uniform Assessment Instrument (UAI) form to the Department of Medical Assistance Services’ (DMAS) new ePAS system.
Under the direction of the Office of the Secretary of Health and Human Resources (OSHHR), four specific goals were set to enhance the PAS process: reducing PAS processing time from request to claims payment; making business process changes to support that; working within current law; and remaining budget neutral.
The move is an effort to help minimize workflow disruption and maximize efficiencies for Curaspan clients in Virginia. Curaspan worked with the state to develop a new interface that helps further streamline the submission process. The integrated solution enables the completion of necessary forms within Discharge Central and submission of forms direction to the state’s portal with one click, without having to exit the program. The integration also “maps responses from the commonwealth back to the appropriate patient record in DischargeCentral,” according to Curaspan, and allows for immediate remediation of error submissions.
Thomas R. Ferry, Curaspan President and CEO said, “We welcomed the opportunity to work with the state of Virginia and to provide continued support around streamlining our customers’ workflows in support of new regulatory requirements.” Since November, over 1,200 PAS forms were sent using the DischargeCentral interface. As a comparison and testament to simplifying workflows and creating efficiencies, only 6,000 forms were completed for all of 2015.
The solution passed a successful test with four Virginia hospitals prior to the December 1, 2015 deadline requiring electronic submission of all forms. One of the test hospitals was Sentara RMH Medical Center. Brenda Parker, a nephrology case manager and 26-year veteran of Sentara RMH and unofficial UAI coordinator, said the new solution saved up to 45 minutes per submission. She said, “When completing [submissions] in DischargeCentral, we’re using forms that we’ve been using for years, so the familiarity is already there. I can do a screening on my patient in 15 minutes.”
The solution also populates forms with data from hospitals’ ADT feeds and allows easy sharing of forms with post-acute providers who require them for care reimbursement.