BRHS looks to invest in improving its rate of returns | Eastern North Carolina Now

    The Beaufort County Medical Center Board of Trustees made a leap of faith at its meeting Tuesday toward bringing in a company to help the hospital implement a Clinical Documentation Improvement Program, which would help the hospital collect $1 million to $1.7 million in extra revenue within the coming year, according to worst and best-case scenarios provided by Cost/Containment Committee Chair Hood Richardson and Beaufort Regional Health Systems Chief Financial Officer Chris Riggs, respectively. Riggs said the hospital would see the first dollar 21 days after the program gets off the ground.

BCMC trustee Dr. Brenda Peacock and BRHS Director of Marketing and Public Relations Pam Shadle at Tuesday's BCMC Board of Trustees meeting.

    Under this program, which would be ongoing, BCE Technology of Clearwater, Fla., would send in specially trained physicians for five to eight hours every week to review the hospital’s patient charts for “appropriateness of documentation,” according to Riggs. He said the program would cost the hospital between $15,000 and $16,000 a month. According to Richardson, the hospital is losing a minimum of $60,000 for every month that it’s not in the program.

    Appropriateness of documentation is important, according to Riggs, in that it directly affects the code attributed to the patient’s chart, which shifts the percentage hospitals are reimbursed by Medicare and insurance companies. To use an example provided by BRHS Director of Marketing and Public Relations Pam Shadle, if a patient’s illness is documented as ‘dementia’ rather than ‘confusion’ the percentage of reimbursement is be greater.

    Dr. James Manning, whose practice is hospital-based, attended Tuesday’s meeting to support the idea of such a program, as a backup for physicians who need to “focus on taking care of the patient” rather than the financial impact of their medical documentation.

    “I think this is a great program. I think it will help us to get the money that we are owed by Medicare,” said Manning. “If you look at Medicare they double-check just about everything that we do…this is one thing they don’t double check and the reason is because they don’t want us to code quite appropriately, because it costs them more money. They would rather us code more sloppy.”

    Five of the six trustees who attended Tuesday’s meeting voted to approve a motion made by Richardson to “empower the CEO to proceed with engaging this company, purvey of them being on board and having a contract sign within 10 days.”

    Before the vote, BRHS Chief Executive Officer Susan Gerard spoke in favor of negotiating a contract with BCE Technology.

    “If the board would give us the opportunity to continue the avenue that we’re comparing these two companies (meaning BCE Technology as well as a separate collections agency), the pros and cons, and let us move forward, rather than, you know, we could continue our discussion indefinitely,” she said.

    Ex-BCMC Board of Trustees Chair Sandy Hardy voted against the motion on the grounds that BRHS will soon be affiliated with another medical system, and there’s no need to waste scarce resources chasing after revenue.

    “We are in the middle of a RFP (Request For Proposal) process and by the time we start seeing a return on this we may well be affiliated with someone else,” Hardy stated, before the vote. “If somebody else comes in, they have their own system in place.”

    New BCMC Board of Trustees Chair Alice Mills Sadler reminded the board that the hospital has a responsibility to strengthen the financial position of the hospital while it searches for a partner with which to affiliate. This plan of action has been referred to by representatives of the hospital and the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners as the dual-track approach, seeking cost/containment measures as well as a merger. The old majority—comprised of Hardy, Jack Piland, Grace Bonner, Sandy Easley and Curtis Potter—attempted to discourage the board from following this approach; and instead sought to hire a University Health Systems management team.

    “Even though we’re in the RFP process, we realize since we have painted such a picture of financial distress we do have to do whatever we can to keep revenues coming in and increase revenues until that process is complete,” said Sadler. “It doesn’t make sense to not collect dollars that we can collect, and just wait for somebody else to come and rescue you. You still got to stay afloat till they get here.”

    Dr. Brenda Peacock said that by creating within BRHS a more sound financial environment the hospital would be more appealing to potential affiliation partners.

    “This is something that would be, I think, a suitor, as in someone responding to the RFP, would find favorable knowing that we were working in house on that coding and, therefore, the higher collections and, hopefully, learning from and implementing new stuff that would be continued if they do take over or share partnership,” she said.

    Those voting for the motion to negotiate a contract with BCE Technology were Richardson, Sadler, Peacock, Curtis Potter and Allen Roberson. Trustees Jack Piland, Clifton Gray and Grace Bonner were not in attendance.

    The Cost/Containment Committee was scheduled to meet this morning at 9 a.m., but the meeting was canceled. It was rescheduled for Monday at 8 a.m.