For my major’s Professional Practice Experience, I was paired with Barnes-Jewish Healthcare’s leaders in the Project Management Office. I observed and took part in meetings for a variety of organization-wide projects including the Physician Query Escalation Project. When the coding department begins coding a chart and has questions about patients’ diagnoses or procedures, sometimes key information is missing. Accurate codes are needed to submit a claim to third-party payers (i.e. insurance companies) and reap the most truthful reimbursement for the organization. In this case, coders send a query to the physician or provider asking for clarification on the patient's chart in order to submit the claim to the insurance in a timely fashion. The longer the claim remains in a waiting state, the longer it takes the organization to reap reimbursement. There has never been a standard query escalation process across BJC Healthcare's many hospitals and clinics. Creating a standard process has been on and off the back burner for 7 years. Project management professionals created and presented a standard workflow to BJC leaders, which was finally approved after 7 years. My supervisor's workflow was very detailed and included every single click that one completes on various applications. My role in the project included creating a higher-level and more simplified version of the physician query workflow process using project management tools on Microsoft Visio that BJC can use for standardization and training for years to come.

Margaret would like to thank her faculty sponsor Teresa Neal for their support of this project.