Are you using NextGen Practice Management (PM) Tasks functionality to its full capacity? Does your staff know how to configure and use tasks to assist patients with their individual needs? In this post, we will discuss how workable tasks can be designed to the business rules and policies for your organization and walk-through initial setup and workflow.
What are Workable Tasks?
- Workable tasks help front office staff by allowing the user to catch missing or incorrect information, organize past due balances, fix mail return and/or eligibility verification issues, and much more.
- Workable tasks can save your staff time by cutting down on claim rejections and denials.
- They can be manually created by a user as needed, and/or generated automatically by the system based on auto creation criteria.
- At the practice level, tasks could be required to be completed before the user can proceed with Auto Flow.
Now that you know a little more about Workable Tasks and what they can do for your practice, we will look at some of the specific business issues that the NextGen PM Tasking functionality can help with.
Reasons to Use Workable Tasks
Any business problem which would benefit from discussion with or information from the patient can benefit from the use of workable tasks. The examples below are some of the reasons to implement workable tasks:
- Mail return/bad address
- Disconnected phone number
- Past due patient balances
- Wrong insurance
- Inactive/expired insurance
- Need a copy of the insurance card
- Unable to reach patient
- Budget plan payment delinquent
- Referral issues
- Schedule additional care
- Forms signed/returned (sliding fee paperwork)
- Insurance authorization
Setting Up Workable Tasks
There may be several issues within your practice like the list above that may need to be addressed. Below we will walk through setting up the three options for task types when setting up workable tasks in your NextGen Practice Management.
Deciding the task type will decide if the task needs to be entered a specific way. The three options to decide when adding tasks to your workflow consist of Manual Entry, Auto Creation, and Memorized Report (s) via Background Business Processor (BBP).
In the example below, setting up the tasks through Manual Entry is used for Mail Return/Bad Address Task Type. There are no Auto Creation/Auto Completion criteria and will be manually setup by the user. The setting to designate the task as workable is enabled and has options to include Supervisor’s Task Instructions for the user to follow when working the task. There is also an option to enable Generate System Alert.
The second example is Eligibility Verification Needed and is created as an Auto Create Task; however, there are many additional auto creation tasks that can be used.
Here there is Auto Creation criteria defined and is assigned to the Front Desk Team.
One criterion defined is: an eligibility check is needed because it is X days until the appointment and no eligibility check has not been performed in X number of days.
Another option defined shows the action for: an eligibility check has resulted in a response status of X.
We would expect either of these criteria if met to cause the system to create an auto created task. Same as above in the manual setup for the Mail Return/Bad Address, there are both the options to include Supervisor’s Task Instructions for the user to follow when working the task and the option to enable Generate System Alert.
The third example to set up workable tasks can be done through many of the reports in NextGen PM from the Memorized Report (s) via Background Business Processor (BBP). If a memorized report has the criteria, it can be configured with the BBP to generate the task from the report periodically and automatically. This is a nice alternative if the auto create criteria cannot be found and matches what a practice is looking for. To learn more about the BBP, watch this session from the OSIS Webinar Series: Automate with the Background Business Processor.
Optimizing Workable Tasks – Auto Flow
When practices use the NextGen Worklog Manager, the transition to workable tasks will be much easier. The Worklog Manager is like an inbox where users can find and work on the tasks that are assigned to the user in the PM workable tasks. The typical workflow for the workable tasks in NextGen Practice Management is uncomplicated. If the issue at hand involves a Manual task, as in the example below, a user processes Mail Return/Bad Address, with a step where the user creates the manual task.
In this example, the user processes mail return regularly by creating a chart task on the Clinical History/Notes tab as a manual task in the applicable chart> select task type > click to populate default ‘assigned to” > add optional details to the chart.
An Auto Create or Memorized Report (s) via BBP tasks is created by the system automatically, based on the criteria configured on the Auto Creation tab of the task type in File Maintenance. There is no action required by a user to create the task. As with all EPM tasks, the tasks appear on the Clinical History/Notes tab of the chart and in the Worklog Manager.
This brings us to the last step and the whole objective to using workable tasks is the Auto Flow. The Work Tasks window appears at the designated spot in autoflow, and the user clicks to open the task and works on the issue.
For example, this could be updating a phone number and address or getting a new insurance card. If there are instructions, a blue pushpin on the instruction tab will appear and the user should then review instructions to be sure they are following proper training and steps for each task.
The completion date and completed by fields will automatically default when the user changes the status to complete. The option to make additional fields required can be chosen.
Once the user has resolved the issues that they would proceed with autoflow as usual.
What is the Value to Implementing Tasking?
Accessing NextGen PM Tasking functionality as a practice can really reduce staff and provider burden in the workflow of a practice. By setting up tasks to automate a variety of workflows, employee workload and productivity can be monitored and evaluated to align with business rules and policies of each organization.