University Hospital officials have made a lot of progress in fixing billing problems, the chancellor of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences told a legislative committee Friday.
"I think we are 60 to 65 percent there," Chancellor I. Dodd Wilson said.
"We have a lot of improvements to make in patient billing."
Wilson said a new chief financial officer, director of contracts and business development, and director of business patient services have been hired.
The University Hospital collected $85 million in cash between July 1 and the end of November, he said, and that's $6 million ahead of budget.
The collection rate of gross hospital charges has increased from 32.4 percent to 33.73 percent, Wilson said.
"We still are in financial difficulty,'' he told the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee.
The deficit for the entire campus was slightly less than $2 million between July 1 and the end of November, he said.
The deficit was slightly more than $10 million for the same period a year ago, Wilson said.
"We are at the point of turning the corner and moving up."
Wilson pointed out that only $700,000 is budgeted for capital equipment this year and that's almost suicidal for a high-tech business.
"There is substantial progress without question,'' said Legislative Joint Auditing Committee Chairman Sen. Jon Fitch, D-Hindsville.
Jacob W. Flournoy, internal audit director for the University of Arkansas System, said there has been substantial implementation of the recommendations made in an internal audit during the past eight months.
Last March, a five-year internal audit showed the administrators of University Hospital at one point lost track of accounts worth more than $113 million.
From 1995 to the middle of 1998, the hospital wrote off nearly $197 million in patients' unpaid bills and referred the accounts to collection agencies. But a check of those agencies' records on Aug. 31, 1998, turned up accounts totaling only $83.5 million. Flournoy has said the collection agencies probably tried to collect the rest, deemed it unrecoverable and returned the accounts to the hospital. But hospital officials had no knowledge of that at the time because the billing office did not have a system to keep track of such transactions.
In mid-1999, administrators found that roughly 43 percent, or $48.9 million worth, of the misplaced accounts were irretrievable.
The hospital typically absorbs $90 million to $125 million in patients' unpaid bills each year because it treats many patients who are uninsured and cannot pay, according to hospital officials.
In a report Friday to the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee, Flournoy said the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences has worked from March until November of this year to reduce the differences between its accounting records for bad debts sent to collection agencies and the collection agency statements.
The latest reconciliation between UAMS' Medipac system and the collection agency statements has reduced the net difference from $113 million on Aug. 31, 1998, to $26 million on Oct. 31, 2000, he said.
UAMS' administrators plan to require mandatory electronic file exchanges and reconciliations with collection agencies in subsequent contracts due to the large volume of hospital accounts that have been turned over for collection, Flournoy said.
He said a "right to audit" clause has been developed for future contracts with collection agencies. The contracts will go out for bid in May 2001 and new contracts will be in place on July 1, 2001, he said.

Arkansas Online

-- Anonymous, December 23, 2000