Portland, Oregon, United States
“Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up." Oliver Wendell Holmes One thing I have learned in over 20 years in the healthcare industry is that building a coalition is critical to achieving success. A single person can have a great idea, translate it into a bold vision and even design a roadmap to turn it into a reality. But, without the buy-in of stakeholders the vision will ultimately fade. In this current age of transformation where health entities are standing on a burning platform with a need to optimize the business of today with a keen eye on the future of tomorrow, it’s never been more important to align individual goals with those of the project and the organization. Over the course of my career, the most successful projects I’ve managed have two main ingredients: executive sponsorship and the active participation of those impacted on the front-lines. I’m known for my unique ability to gain agreement on what success looks like and how it can be achieved upfront. This often morphs the original objectives of the project into something far more meaningful and impactful.
I had the distinct pleasure to return to consulting at Nordic to help grow the Performance Improvement practice by bringing my Big 4 advisory & large health system leadership experience and pairing it with teams of seasoned technical and operational professionals. I led multiple net revenue & electronic health record (EHR) assessments, advised a large multi-hospital system through development, testing, & monitoring of charging activities for a full-scale implementation of a new EHR, developed a standard pricing strategy & processes for a health system & then operationalized over a multi-year period, and guided pre-EHR implementation activities for a public health entity, including vendor selection and organizational structure redesign.
I had the unique timing of joining Providence just as the COVID-19 global pandemic was taking hold and changing the way virtually everything worked. I took over a team that had 'temporarily' become remote in the last two months at a large, complex healthcare organization that was still developing the tools, processes, and expectations to make such a huge transition successful. Our main purpose was estimating, analyzing, and reporting net patient service revenue each month for a population of patients that had no precedent. Despite the challenges, we were able accomplish a lot during my 2.5 year tenure at Providence. We developed an accounts receivable valuation tool able to utilize expected reimbursement (after leading an effort to clean up and maintain our hospital contracts in Epic), inclusive of hindsight analysis, to facilitate daily net revenue processing regardless of electronic health record system. I coordinated the Reimbursement department’s cloud migration of over 1,300 SQL stored procedures, tables, views, and reports. I collaborated with data scientists on incorporating artificial intelligence and machine learning into our processes. All of this occurred while we supported the organization's upgrade to Oracle's cloud ERP, transitioned from Tableau to PowerBI, implemented Epic at the legacy St. Joseph Health hospitals to Epic, and acquired four new hospitals. In between all of these major optimization initiatives,I also supported the annual audit process, coordinated the annual pricing update by managing our external vendor, provided input on the annual budget, and managed an offshore team of 20 caregivers supporting our onshore team full-time.
I began my career at EY as a Staff Consultant in the niche Health Sciences Advisory Services group, a boutique group remaining after the Capgemini divestiture, and worked my way up the ranks to Senior Manager as the firm evolved into a top tier consulting outfit. During that time, I expanded my base of data analytics & modelling skills to include leading large, complex initiatives focused on integration, transformation & optimization for health providers across the US. The bulk of my experience is in the revenue cycle space, with a specialty in the middle of the revenue cycle (e.g. pricing & contracting strategy, charge structure and charge capture). I have also led projects focused on supply chain, pharmacy and clinical operations. In addition, I helped design and implement process controls related to Sarbanes-Oxley, led performance audits for government entities (i.e. Yellow Book Audits) and conducted due diligence related to mergers & acquisitions. Most recently, I shifted my focus forward by championing EY’s Wellness Mural that highlights the duality of growth (need to optimize the business of today while preparing for the future), activating our Alliance with Microsoft in the Health sector to create more collaboration between our organizations and coordinating our response to the transparency and interoperability regulations soon to be enforced on providers.
I was one of the original founding members of Huron Consulting Group coming over from Arthur Andersen with twenty Partners to start this firm from scratch. I was a litigation consultant and spent most of my time conducting forensic accounting investigations and building financial impact models. My largest project was providing litigation support to a major computer equipment leasing company in defense of an $80 million lawsuit for back compensation filed by former Directors of the company’s Ventures group. I individually recreated and investigated the accounting records for debt instruments (approximately 525 deals) over a six-year period representing over $175 million in interest income. In addition, I coordinated the efforts of a four-person team to allocate around $700 million in Venture-related write-offs from a six-year period to individual deals through review of company records and/or interviews of company personnel.