Ob-Gyn Coding Alert

Following these tips could have your practice emerging better than before.

During this unprecedented coronavirus pandemic, you may feel as though your practice is feeling an incredible burden and facing challenges alone — but you couldn’t be more wrong. Every ob-gyn practice, even those around the world, have to adapt to changing working conditions.

Take heart, however, because innovation abounds, and you can turn this situation into an opportunity to both deepen relationships with your patients and streamline your day-to-day operations.

Here’s one practice’s attempt at facing this challenge, care of Ann Moll, practice manager at Personalized Women’s Healthcare in Plano, Texas. “Keep well and keep smiling,” Moll says, “And hopefully this will pass sooner rather than later.”

Taking Medicine to “Virtual” Levels

Although you may be overjoyed at the opportunity to do virtual visits, Moll has found “it takes an hour to connect with the patient. By the time you’ve taught the patient what to do, their Internet speed cannot cope!” For that reason, she says their practice has allowed the patients to initiate telephone consults.

Obstetric patients: Because obstetric patients are considered high-risk for COVID-19, your practice may want to limit any chance of exposure. “To comfort our ob patients that we’re not seeing every week or few weeks, we are calling them to make sure they are okay,” Moll says. “We chat and support them. Most don’t want to be seen until they’re due … They’re very thankful for the support.”

You may want to take a similar tactic with postpartum and post ops your ob-gyn did mid-March, before the pandemic hit, Moll says.

Create a Check-in Process

Suppose you had patients on your schedule your ob-gyn was supposed to see. What should you do then? “What I implemented the minute this started was calling the patients and pre-screening them. We are re-scheduling anyone with a hint of an issue,” Moll says.

If you need to see a patient in-person, then you can take extra steps to insure you’re not potentially spreading the virus. Have “a staff member (who is rotated, to give them a break) wear PPE, … take temps and do a re-screen.” Not only will you feel more confident you’re doing everything you can to mitigate the virus, but “patients really like this.”

Other things you can do to reassure your patients are:

• Remove excess chairs from the waiting room (have more than 6ft between them)
• Wipe down constantly between patients—chairs, surfaces, door handles, door edges, etc.
• Have your sign-in clipboard contain only one sign-in sticker
• Give the pen the patient uses to the patient, so they can use it throughout the office and take home with them
• Have patients perform most of the check-in process online, if possible. “Any additional or missing forms, we print. The patient is roomed to complete the rest and worked up clinically,” Moll says.
• Wipe down credit cards before touching and when returning to the patients. Don’t accept cash right now.

“We are also installing a ‘sneeze guard’ at check-in and check-out, so we won’t have to waste PPE,” Moll says. However, patients like to see staff using masks, so consider using washable masks behind these sneeze guards for the front staff. “We will change them at lunch and have them hot laundered,” Moll adds.

Be as Efficient As Possible In-Office

Once you have the patient in the actual room, make sure she spends “the least possible amount of time” there.