Care access department offers centralized customer service

When patients and referring physicians request an appointment at USA Health physician practices, they will be connected with a new centralized care access department that will meet their needs more quickly and efficiently.

“We have streamlined the process behind the scenes, making it easier for patients and referring physicians to connect with our providers,” said Shelby Smith, director of care access at USA Health. “We want to create a memorable and positive experience for all of our patients and customers.”

The new care access department has the responsibility for pre-service front-end operations at USA Physicians Group’s ambulatory offices, including scheduling, patient check-in and checkout, referral management, template and capacity management, along with training and data management. As the region’s only academic health system, the practices provide a wide range of care including unique specialty and subspecialty care.

Smith said the process for patients requesting an appointment at the practices remains the same. Patients can request an appointment online by visiting usahealthsystem.com and clicking on “Request an Appointment.”

The care access department will be able to answer questions about any of the ambulatory offices and make it easier for patients to be referred from one location to another, if needed, Smith said. “Ultimately, our goal is to provide a high level of customer service as we connect patients with our many providers,” he said.

Within the care access department, a concierge referral team will focus on guiding referring providers through the process. In addition, care access will have a clinical analytics team to gather data to inform decisions to better meet the needs of patients and referring physician offices.