Our 8 a.m. rush crawls when portal pre-reg is only half finished and we still have to scan IDs, update insurance, and get consents at the window in Athena. Do you finish it during check-in or send folks to the two kiosks, and what’s working to prevent the duplicate charts we’re merging about 3 times a day?
But we tamed the “8 a.m. rush” by making a hard rule: if Athena shows pre-reg under about 80%, they go to the kiosk; if it’s 80%+ we finish at the window, and staff does a quick DOB+phone search before sending anyone to avoid dupes. That single threshold sped up the line and cut our merges from a few a day to maybe one. What completion rate are you seeing right now?
We started a 7:15 a.m. SMS nudge that deep-links to Athena pre-reg and asks them to snap ID/insurance, which cut window work so the “8 a.m… rush” mostly becomes consents only. If they ignore it, we send them to the two kiosks, but completion jumped about 20% and duplicates dropped because fewer new records get created.
But we cut our morning line by adding a 20-second ‘door check’ with a greeter in Athena: they run universal search, confirm DOB + phone, and enter the driver’s license number into a custom field; if the DL# already exists, we stop and pull the right chart, otherwise they get a QR to finish at the kiosk. That tiny DL# step dropped our duplicate creations to near zero and we only rescan ID/insurance if the images are older than 90 days. @Jamal, do you have a field you could standardize on for that quick match?
But for “half finished” portal work we send them to the kiosks, but the real fix was switching Athena’s kiosk to consents‑only and disabling new patient creation there; staff only step in if ID/insurance images are missing. That sped our 8 a.m; block and cut duplicate merges from daily to about once a week. Have you tried kiosk update‑only mode in Athena?
, the “8 a.m. rush” killed us until we stopped finishing everything at the window and moved insurance edits to a same‑day back‑office queue; check-in just confirms DOB and snaps a pic in athenaCapture, then we seat them while verification runs. To curb dupes, we pulled “Create patient” from front-desk roles and require an advanced search plus a second identifier before a registrar can add a chart — merges went from daily to rare. Anyone else lock down creation like that, or is there a better Athena setting I’m missing?