PATIENT‑RESPONSIBILITY WORKFLOW ASSESSMENT
Follow the Number Assessment
It follows the number, and the conversation around it. Not the claim.
A stage-by-stage look at how patient responsibility moves through your organization, from the initial financial conversation through post adjudication.
OPERATIONAL SUPPORT
Who It Is For
This is for behavioral health operators who can see the balances and still cannot see the leakage source.
Typical Situations:
Leadership watches the metrics that fit on a screen. Where a balance stopped is not one of them.
Admissions can explain what was quoted. Billing can explain what posted. Neither can answer the patient who is holding both.
Statements go out, and nobody has the conversation that explains why the number on the page is the number.
A level of care changed mid-stay, and the change in what the patient could owe was never written down.
Notes live in more than one system, and the account never becomes whole.
Patient-responsibility follow-up begins after discharge with no owner between the EOB and the first outreach.
If the breakdown is already clear, you do not have to begin here. When it is not, an engagement may begin with Follow the Number.
THE THREE STAGES
What It Examines
GAC traces a defined sample of accounts across three stages. At each step the question is the same: where is the number, where is the conversation, and where is the next step.
The First Number
Can a second person see what the patient was told about cost prior to admission?
The Changing Number
Did the estimate on the file move when coverage or level of care changed mid treatment?
The Posted Number
After the episode’s claims finalized, who owned the balance and does the file show the next step?
Authorization, coding, and clinical documentation are considered only when they affect the patient‑responsibility number or related communication.
WRITTEN FINDINGS
What You Receive
A written findings report that includes:
Where the number, the conversation, or the next step disappeared in the accounts examined
What the current structure can and cannot show
Limitations of the sample
Prioritized recommendations your team can act on
Discovering and reporting a pattern in the agreed sample is included.
Establishing how common it is, reconstructing additional accounts, conducting broader root-cause analysis, or changing the workflow can be scoped separately.
This is an operational workflow assessment. It is not a legal, regulatory, coding, or billing-compliance audit.
Read the method behind the assessment in Follow the Number. Learn more about the account-level experience behind it on Founder Experience.
Read the Full Sample Assessment
SEE THE ASSESSMENT IN PRACTICE
Follow five fictional patient accounts through a complete example of the question examined, evidence reviewed, findings, recommendations, and limits of a Follow the Number assessment.
SCOPED TO YOUR OPERATION
How It Works
How It Begins
A complimentary, confidential consultation comes first. GAC scopes the assessment around your organization’s structure, systems, and operational procedures, then provides a fixed-fee proposal.
The assessment then uses the agreed method of system access and a focused set of staff conversations.
What May Happen After
Some organizations utilize GAC’s findings to strengthen their workflow internally.
Others engage GAC to implement procedural changes, apply the organization’s own standards more consistently, or provide ongoing operational support. The scope can be as focused or as broad as the organization needs. When the goal is internal adoption, the engagement ends when the workflow can run without GAC.
BEFORE ANY ACCOUNT IS OPENED
See Whether the Number Survives the Handoff
A short consultation is enough to tell if Follow the Number is the right first step.
Confidential inquiry. Response within one business day.