Patient Accounts Supervisor Jessica Deleon moved quickly. She wanted to help a Mount Sinai Health System patient get all of her paperwork in order so she could proceed with a cardiovascular procedure the next day. There were a couple of challenges, however. The patient had just switched insurance carriers and now needed a physician referral all over again. Then there was another hitch: the patient had forgotten the name of her Mount Sinai primary care physician.
“I did not want her to have to postpone her procedure,” says Jessica, who works at Mount Sinai’s Water Street building in downtown Manhattan, where the Health System’s patient financial services office is based.
So Jessica and her team performed their own rapid response by obtaining all of the required approvals within 24 hours.
The next morning, Jessica came into the office early so she could confirm that the insurance carrier had registered the referral and the patient was cleared. Once she had the green light to proceed, Jessica called the patient and told her the good news—she could leave for the procedure. The patient was so grateful she told Jessica that she was in her prayers.
Erwin Ramirez and Jessica Deleon
“I always get a warm feeling knowing that patients can come in for their appointments, and of course, that the hospital is getting proper reimbursement,” Jessica says.
Her supervisor, Erwin Ramirez, Senior Director, Financial Services, The Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai Queens, has worked with Jessica for nine years and considers her an outstanding employee who oversees a “talented and proactive” team at Water Street.
“Billing is a difficult conversation to have most of the time. Our job is to make it as easy as possible,” he says. Jessica’s team, he adds, has “outstanding communications skills and shows exceptional compassion” to patients.