November 12 , 2004

PACE by the numbers

The implementation of a new outpatient registration and billing system called
PATCOM at the end of January will mark the completion of PACE (Practice Administrative Cycle Enhancements) — a project that began in January 2002 to improve registration and referral processes. The scope of the project is tremendous and affects many areas of the hospital. The proof is in the numbers, some of which are listed below.

From June 2003 through August 2004, the outpatient practices had the following:
• A two-day training session on new practice operations was attended by 996 staff members. These same employees, along with many other staff throughout the organization, will be trained on procedures supporting the PATCOM implementation.
• The practices transferred 110,000 calls to the Registration and Referral Center (RRC).
• The practices sent 90,000 patients to an express phone to make changes to their demographic or insurance information.

The PACE project team accomplished the following:
• The team coordinated the implementation of the new PACE model processes at 153 physical locations, which included 293 scheduling departments.
• The team also coordinated the implementation of a new label system used on ancillary service requisitions, installing 450 printers for label production.
• The implementation team dedicated more than 20,000 employee hours to the
first two phases of the project and held more than 1,600 implementation meetings
at the practices.
• The team conducted 1,376 hours of training.

The RRC achieved the following:
• The staff handled 310,000 inbound calls and made 360,000 outbound calls to patients to ensure the most up-to-date patient information.
• The staff answered 84 percent of calls within 20 seconds, which is less than three rings.
• The RRC mailed more than 100,000 blue cards.

The Clinical Support Services were heavily involved with PACE:
• Clinical Support Services represented 1.7 million tests a year in 60 different departments.
• The staff used 17 different computer systems, all of which needed to be integrated in the new PATCOM system.
• Approximately 580 Clinical Support Services staff will be trained to use PATCOM.

Patient Accounts made major contributions to PACE:
• Patient Accounts estimates that more than 1.8 million outpatient bills will be
produced by PATCOM.
• Patient Accounts answered 100,000 calls about billing questions, which is expected to decrease next year based on PACE improvements.

The PATCOM Testing Team helped the PACE project with the following:
• The team dedicated more than 1,500 hours to test development.
• The team processed 4,074 scenarios, which took three weeks and 60 people to test the new PATCOM system.

For more information, contact paceproject@partners.org.