Patient access managers must train their representatives to adapt to the new Advance Beneficiary Notice (ABN) of Noncoverage, which CMS released March 3 and that will be mandatory for facilities to use by September 1.

The focus of the training should be on the new requirement for access staff members to provide a cost estimate of the service to the patient, says Yvonne Focke, RN, BSN, MBA, regional director of revenue cycle management at Mercy Health Partners in Cincinnati.

In an age of competitive healthcare in which patients shop more than they ever have, some access managers may have already addressed cost estimates; now, they all have to address it.

“That’s a huge change,” Focke says. “It was always kind of a wish list [item] before.”