Patient access staffer goes beyond signature for patient

For 10 hours a day, four days a week, Chris Fisher gets signatures.

As a patient access registrar, the outgoing 32-year-old former sales professional obtains signatures on forms required for admission to UCHealth Memorial Hospital North’s Emergency Department as well as when patients leave or transfer.

Most interactions are routine. Others offer the opportunity for a personal connection such as Fisher’s work with a man whose worries extended beyond his illness.

“He was so stressed,” Fisher said of the patient. “He wasn’t worried about being sick. He trusted us to take care of him. But he was really anxious because he was afraid his bills weren’t going to get paid. He kept repeating to me that he had to get his bills out. It was really bothering him.”

As Fisher evaluated solutions, including one common to his generation but not to the patient’s – downloading an app and paying bills online – he settled on a solution.

“He gave me a very detailed description of his truck, where it was parked and where the plastic bag was inside it that held his bills,” Fisher said. “He handed me his keys. I was able to find his truck immediately. It was exactly where he said it would be and so were the bills that needed to be mailed.”

Fisher retrieved the bills and noticed some were missing stamps. He purchased stamps at the hospital gift shop, applied them, and dropped the bills in a mailbox. Later, he returned the truck’s keys to the patient, shared his actions, and turned down an offer for reimbursement.

A handshake was all the reward he needed.

“It was the right thing to do,” Fisher said. “If I can do something to ease a patient’s burden and in some small way help them out, I’m going to do it. That’s why we’re all here.”