Market Education

Preadmission Screening process in TIER Workflow

Most organizations have developed methods to prescreen referrals and new admissions into their organization. A well-designed preadmission screening process is an important case management resource to help prospective clients or referral resources determine if the organization can meet their needs and to make appropriate referrals to other resources if the organization is not the appropriate treatment setting or lacks the services needed by the prospective client.

Accreditation organizations such as JCAHO, CARF, and COA require that organizations formalize a process to determine appropriateness of admission and treatment setting as well as specify criteria to be used by clinical staff during the prescreening process. Naturally, the preadmission screening process can be expedited or bypassed if the individual is experiencing a crisis that warrants immediate admission in accordance with the organization’s intake process.

However, under normal or ideal circumstances, each prospective client should be prescreened. To facilitate this process, the Service Delivery module of TIER® Workflow includes a Preadmission Screening form that can be used by staff. The face sheet of this form is inserted below:

Basic prescreening information is included under each of the five tabs of the form. If the screener checks that the reason for referral is due to homicidal or suicidal thoughts, the selected reason will automatically bring forward the related assessment so that the screener can expand the preadmission process to include the lethality assessment needed.

In addition, once information is entered into fields on the “presenting problem/history” tab, this information will automatically be initialized to the Intake form if the individual is subsequently admitted. Similarly, all necessary insurance information that is gathered during preadmission is also linked to the TIER® Billing module and used to obtain authorizations from the funding source. The Preadmission Screening form is also used to track referrals to the organization as well as referrals to other organizations if admission is not recommended. Staff can also initiate development of a treatment contract with the client, if needed, as well as schedule follow up contacts with the prospective client and/or referral source to be sure that recommendations for treatment are followed.

Reports in TIER® Workflow summarize basic information such as types of referrals, reasons for referral and outcomes. Staff can also use TIER®’s dynamic drill down reports to set up data queries related to preadmission screening activities. For example, a drill down may be useful to track volume and type of referrals to a particular program or by type of client.