Coroner classes fill up quickly
Project: Coroner Seminar Registration System
Jurisdiction: Los Angeles County
Agency: Department of Coroner
Vendor: Milwaukee-based Metavante
Date completed: September 2008
The Los Angeles County Department of Coroner, which investigates approximately 20,000 cases annually to determine the identity, cause and manner of death, has become a learning resource for medical examiner professionals. Every year, it hosts several well-attended seminars and workshops, such as the West Coast Training Conference and Skeletal Recovery Workshops. With more than 300 professionals typically attending each event, the task of processing paper registrations and payments by mail and through office walk-ins had become a back-office burden, straining the department’s customer service resources.
Last year, department officials concluded that they needed to improve their clerical and payment acceptance procedures to allow their educational programs to grow. The department launched the online Coroner Seminar Registration System with the help of Milwaukee-based Metavante. It had worked with the vendor previously to create a credit card payment system for the department’s “Skeletons in the Closet” online store, http://lacstores.co.la.ca.us, which sells clothing with off-beat images, such as body outlines and toe tags, as well as office supplies and a DVD collection of some of the department’s most interesting cases.
Using the online Coroner Seminar Registration System, which launched last fall, seminar attendees can register and pay for seminars and workshops. The Department of Coroner-branded Web payment portal is embedded into the department’s existing Web site and linked to its computer systems. That allows registration processing, payment account validation, bill presentment and credit and debit card-based payment acceptance.
Those who sign up for workshops receive immediate confirmation. As a result, the department’s revenue cycles are faster because of the online credit card payment processing, and the customer support staff is no longer overwhelmed with registration tasks.