Situation

Northwest Florida Community Hospital is a 25-bed critical access hospital (CAH) that has been struggling financially for several years. The hospital was recently purchased by Mr. Patrick Schlenker, whose goal was to turn the hospital’s financial performance around and improve the quality of health care services provided to the community. After a couple of years, he realized that the task at hand was too large to accomplish alone, and he needed someone who had deep expertise in CAHs to assist him in completing this task. After attending Wipfli’s Critical Access Hospital Knowledge Workshop, he knew he’d found a team of experts who could provide the assistance and support he needed.

Strategy

Wipfli’s first task was to complete a thorough operational review of the hospital. As a result of the review, Wipfli found a number of issues and provided recommendations for improvement to the hospital’s overall Medicare reimbursement and operational efficiency. The hospital implemented several of the recommendations, which provided immediate results to its bottom line. From this point, the hospital leveraged Wipfli for its financial audit and reimbursement needs. Wipfli then performed a revenue cycle analysis, which identified several inefficiencies in the hospital’s processes. Upon implementation of additional recommendations from the revenue cycle analysis, the hospital experienced immediate improvement in its cash flow, billing efficiency, and revenue capture.

Benefits

Overall, the hospital has seen dramatic improvements since partnering with Wipfli. The hospital has eliminated inefficiencies that were affecting its financial and operating performance. The hospital now has streamlined its operational processes and is on the road to a significant financial recovery and improved operating performance.