Strong medicine: rethinking the PFS director's role - patient financial services - includes related article on accounts receivable management

Healthcare Financial Management, August, 1991 by Carol Bradford, Arnold Simoni, Dudley Medlock

Because hospitals parallel other industries undergoing rapid change and requiring, enhanced management discipline, more hospitals may need to look for skills in common rather than limiting their searches to candidates with hospital experience. In short, they may look for experience in an environment that requires proactive, anticipatory management and the right interpersonal and communication skills, especially in articulating goals with service departments.

Recruiting for parallel skills rather than an experience locale gives an organization access to a much broader base of candidates. The following criteria are qualifying guidelines against which candidates from other industries can be evaluated. They include experience with:

* Collection strategies that focus on persuasion rather than harassment;

* Contractual agreements and negotiations within a proactive environment;

* Non-payment or poor payment performance;

* Pre-qualifying customers or verifying credit;

* Data processing systems management;

* Problem solving;

* Planning, organizational, and communication skills;

* Professional accounting, with emphasis on reimbursement issues; and

* High-volume businesses handling big-ticket products or services.

Professional criteria

Whether a hospital redefines and upgrades the role of the PFS director by providing further training for the current director or by recuriting a cash management professional from another industry with common disciplines, new professional criteria must be applied to meet existing challenges. These demands are useful in constructing a profile of the contemporary PFS director.

The profile includes effective management in three key areas: business and financial management, operational systems management, and human resources management. It also includes new educational and experience requirements.

Because the position of PFS director--like other management posts in healthcare organizations--increasingly requires advanced skills, some organizations will require education and experience that includes:

* At the least, a bachelor's degree and, ideally, an MBA degree or the equivalent;

* An accounting degree, including knowledge of accounting and financial data processing systems;

* Professional certification;

* Advanced knowledge of reimbursement practices; and

* A minimum of three years experience in cash management (involving credit, billing, and collection functions) within an organization with a similar or larger revenue base.

Business and financial management includes:

* Developing and implementing annual operating budgets;

* Stratifying accounts to determine where major collection efforts should be made;

* Providing statistical and demographic analyses to forecast trends;

* Working with hospital department heads to evaluate service rates and to determine their compatibility with financial goals; and

* Reviewing or redesigning collection systems to meet organization objectives.

Operational systems management skills should be used to ensure that patient accounting operations are based on thorough knowledge of financial data processing systems and their effects on all hospital departments. To maintain operating viability, a successful manager organizes, tracks, and monitors information as it flows to and from the patient accounting department.