Sutter Health Care Case Analysis
ACC 281: Accounting Concepts for Health Care Professionals
Arlene Rivero
May 21st, 2011

Sutter Health Care Case Analysis With the current recession, health care organizations have seen in increase in the inability to collect debt from self-pay, uninsured, and underinsured patients. This has caused a struggle on the organization to meet operational margins, and profits. There are a number of reasons for this new increase in patient debts, the more common are, poor accounting practices, lack of patient information and correct patient demographics. Obtaining the correct patient information plays a large part on non collectable debt because patients are not able to be reached. Even though …show more content…

Each individual was in charge of their own business. Each team was given access to a horizontal analysis of its aged trial balance. They were able to see their progress in meeting the individual and team benchmarks. The accounting strategy that Sutter health was trying to impart on its front end registration staff involved increasing collections, reducing A/R days and empowering staff members to be responsible for each account they come in contact with. Once the situation was turned around, employees were trained on the new system, the organization focused on the accounts receivable. Gross A/R days, cash collections, unbilled A/R days, billed A/R days, major payer A/R days, and percentage of A/R over 90, 180, and 360 days were areas of focus. Each associate was able to prioritize and automate their account work lists. They were able to see their rank amongst the entire team. This empowered the staff to work successfully and find their areas that would have the greatest impact on the key benchmarked areas. In 2006, with the increase in revenue collections, new found completive sprit, and renewed sense of ownership, the central business office “received Sutter’s Business Processes Excellence Award for outstanding achievement (Souza & McCarty, 2007).” Sutter health reorganized its central business office and allowed its patient registration staff to become part of the collections process. This author applauds their achievement and the increase in