Evaluation of GMCA contract due

A new company may soon be handling the Commonwealth Health Center’s collections after the management confirmed plans to solicit bids from collection companies to take care of the hospital’s receivables.

Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. CEO Esther Muña told the board of trustees that the performance of their current collection firm—the Guam Marianas Collection Agency— is up for evaluation. “It’s due for re-evaluation … and we’re going to analyze their performance. It’s about time to go ahead and open the bid [for collection],” said Muña in response to queries on how GMCA has performed in the years it’s been doing business with the hospital.

According to board trustee Roy Rios, the board—in its effort to boost the agency’s revenue and collection—has to know the effectiveness of the management’s existing collection efforts. Rios specifically asked how much GMCA is bringing to CHCC each month. The data was not available last week.

It was learned that GMCA is usually given boxes of files of self-pay patients to bill.

“What we asked them to do is help us on our backlogs [of self-pay patients],” said Muna.

Early last year, a federal team of medical experts recommended getting rid of the hospital’s contract with its collection agency, describing it as costly and not fully integrated with the CHCC’s business office.

As part of the hospital’s sustainability plan, the team said that getting rid of the contract can be done by September 2014, in anticipation of the completion of the revenue cycle automation then proposed by the corporation. The same team recommended that self-pay debt collection be returned to the business office.

GMCA currently does the billing and collection work for the hospital. It uses its own financial system and only gets paid when it actually collects money for the hospital. GMCA’s contract provides a 25-percent fee for what it collects and a 10-percent fee for billing works.

During Thursday’s continuation of the board meeting, vice chair Pete Dela Cruz reiterated his view about the corporation’s “poor collection efforts.”

Based on the financial data presented last week, Dela Cruz said that there’s $17 million in collectibles due the healthcare agency.

Target

In her annual report submitted to the board last week, Muña conceded that “there are still missed opportunities for collections and revenue improvement.”

She bared plans to improve the collections and fill the revenue gaps. These include assessing the current revenue cycle operation flows and current business staffing; standardizing productivity; improving billing and coding and charge capture workflow; improving relationship/contract with insurance companies; and re-evaluating the charge master, among others.

Muna also revealed that a request for proposal for the revenue cycle improvement project, which is federally funded, is scheduled for re-announcement this week.