Hospital’s monthly collection doubles

Since the healthcare corporation took over the former Department of Public Health in October, significant strides have already been achieved, among them collections that reached $1 million in November 2011, according to Gov. Benigno R. Fitial yesterday.

“That is one big improvement. Honestly, I was shocked last month when they collected more than $1 million at the hospital,” said Fitial during a surprise visit to the Commonwealth Health Center yesterday.

Corporation chief executive officer Juan N. Babauta confirmed this with the Saipan Tribune, attributing it to the immediate measures put in place by the corporation.

From only one coder prior to the corporation’s takeover, Babauta said that CHC now has six coders, decentralized in key hospital areas. Training is ongoing for more coders who will speed up the inputting of medical records so that billing and collection will be done right away.

The corporation also discovered piles of uncoded medical records. Based on its initial assessment, the hospital’s uncollected bills amount to about $52 million, of which only over $20 million can be potentially collected because the statute of limitations has already run out.

Babauta told Saipan Tribune that the over $1 million collected in November doubles the amount the hospital usually collects every month. He promised further improvements in three areas: coding, billing, and collection.

He attributed the improvement to everything they have initiated at the hospital, including adding more coders and decentralizing them and efforts to stay away from paper forms and having everything computerized and automated.

“By the end of the day, it’s really how much we collect [that matters],” he said.

Corporation officials hope that collection will continue to increase in coming months as the corporation stabilizes the automated central system.

Since the discovery that only 50 percent of hospital services are actually being charged, Fitial said the corporation has been serious in charging the necessary fees for all services delivered. “That’s one major factor,” he said.

Babauta said another big factor that is helping the situation is the involvement of doctors in coding their patients’ medical records.

“Ultimately, we would like to involve the doctors in the process because there are no other people more qualified to encode these records than doctors.and we need their help. Doctors can read their writings and oftentimes, coders have to go to them to verify something and when you do that, you’re already behind [schedule]. We want to get them involved as soon as possible because it will greatly help in improving hospital collection and revenues,” said Babauta.

Despite the creation of the corporation as an independent agency, it is still functioning as a semi-government entity because it still heavily relies on the general fund for operations. Babauta said the $1 million they collected in November was used for the personnel cost of its more than 600 employees.

“We’ve been sharing the cost with the government and we used this collection in paying the $800,000 personnel cost for our employees,” he said.

He disclosed that the corporation still owes its vendors more than $1 million in unpaid obligations.