The patients receiving care from nurses and doctors in the near 300-year old, yet modern St James Hospital in Dublin probably never give a thought to the need for complex, highly efficient back office processes required to fund their treatment. With around 780 beds and 3,500 staff, the St James Hospital in the Irish capital prides itself on its commitment to delivering health care innovation as Ireland’s largest acute general teaching hospital.
But that mission stretches to also encompass innovative back office approaches designed to use available funding ever more efficiently to deliver greater resources to the front line of care. As Director of Finance at the St James Hospital it is Brian Fitzgerald’s task to make sure the hospital has the resources necessary to deliver the best possible care in the fastest possible time for all patients accessing the hospital’s services.
“We have an annual budget of €450 million, which may sound a lot, but in today’s economic reality we have to find every way to make that funding work harder to deliver our top-class emergency and elective medical and surgical services,” Brian stresses. It is a money-management environment where every efficiency makes a positive difference.
That long-range efficiency focus led Brian Fitzgerald to the decision to engage an external resource for billing follow up. “My team and I calculated that using an outside resource to do follow up would deliver efficiencies of scale in our billings and collections process,” Brian told Intrum Magazine. “In parallel, I anticipated that there would be a review at national level of administration resources employed in the health service and that this function had the potential to free up resources for front line services.”
With his deep experience with the hospital and wider health service stretching back many years, Brian realised that the hospital and its patients could also benefit from the investments companies such as Intrum Justitia make in technology, communication, HR, training and collection techniques.
“After in-depth discussions internally and externally with the collections industry, we reached the conclusion that the possibilities of having this function managed from an external perspective were very real and achievable,” Brian recalls.
Despite having used the services of Intrum Justitia in other areas for many years to provide debt collection services, Brian nonetheless put the new contract out to tender. He was almost overwhelmed by the large number of tender submissions from both national and international service providers.
An evaluation committee was established to review the submissions. Their final recommendation was to use Intrum Justitia, after which exclusive negotiations were started prior to agreeing a contract. The St. James Hospital is breaking new ground in Ireland by using an external supplier for billing follow up.
As far as Brian Fitzgerald is aware, the agreement with Intrum Justitia is the first of its kind in the republic, although he knows other hospitals are looking to do something similar now they have seen how successful it has been. The implementation and delivery of the service is already paying off for both St James Hospital and patients alike.
“Intrum Justitia worked very closely with us from the start and the new contract is achieving value for money,” Brian said. “I am happy with the decision and I am particularly happy with our chosen partners. This has been a win- win situation for all parties involved.
If Intrum keep their eye as firmly on the ball as now, I am sure that together we will continue to improve and enhance the external management approach.” Brian Fitzgerald is convinced that similar innovative approaches will be explored in the future.
“ There is no doubt that we in the public sector, and in particular the Health Service, must look to new initiatives to handle back office functions, which will enable us to deliver greater resources to the front line of care.”
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