Annual Report 09 - MCCG General Surgery Residency

With Issam Shaker, M.D., Professor, Darla Rich, R.N., and Sally Lester, R.N., Dr Nakayama provides
pediatric surgical services that are essential to the Children’s Hospital at MCCG. Volumes of pediatric surgery
are on track to increase by 100% over FY2008. The pediatric surgical practice is running two major
operational projects for MCCG. The first is to improve operating room performance using team-based
practice. Now in its sixth month, there have been improvements in quality of care with an average $600 per
case decrease in operational costs. The second is tracking patient movement and hand-offs among different
departments in the hospital. There has been a significant decrease in the number of errors in information
hand-offs among pediatric patients undergoing surgery in the six months of review.
To run clinical operations in a financially responsible, transparent manner at moderate expense.
Our objectives are to achieve 10% growth in revenue with expenses controlled to a 2% increase. Figures
for FY2008 ending in October showed 4.3% decrease in charges and 8.3% in net revenue. Total expenses
increased by 13.3%, which was within budget by 7.0%. Important clinical operational objectives were decreasing
billing lag to less than 7 days, denial rates under 15%, and net collection rates above 90%. In
FY2008 billing lag was 22 days (15 in FY2007), denial rates were 7% (7% in FY2007), and net collection
rates were 81% (85% in FY2007). Clearly financial performance is not where we want it and improvements
in billing practices are major priorities for the coming year.
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