A person behind the performance: Sandy Lood
Sandy Lood is vice president, revenue cycle, at Cottage Health, a health system based in Santa Barbara, California. Kodiak Solutions recognized Cottage Health with its 2023 Revenue Cycle Performance Award, presented at Kodiak’s 2024 Healthcare Virtual Symposium.
Please meet one of the many people behind the performance.
| Age | 43 |
| Tenure with organization | Five years |
| Reports to | CFO |
| Number of direct reports | Eight |
| Number of care sites reporting revenue | 23 |
| Annual revenue cycle budget | $31 million |
| Number of revenue cycle FTEs | 248.6 |
| Work modality | Hybrid in-person and work from home |
| Patient accounting system | Epic |
| Number of revenue cycle vendors | 29 |
| Fully outsources revenue cycle or in-house revenue cycle team | In-house |
| Cross-department relationships | Not applicable |
| Biggest external revenue cycle challenge | Payor behaviors, payor collaboration, joint operating committees (JOCs) |
| Solution to external challenge | Need solid data to bring to the payors that both the payor and provider validate; both payors and providers need to be speaking the same language; if there was one source of truth for all data and benchmarking, we can really make positive changes for our communities and patients. |
| Biggest internal revenue cycle challenge | Staff skill set; being able to support growth; revisiting team structure. |
| Solution to internal challenge | Get involved with job descriptions and how we build our worklists; we need to breakdown the walls between individual teams, e.g., hospital billing, health information management, revenue integrity; approach the work from an analytics, data perspective. |
| Describe your organization’s relationship with payors in one word | Non-existent |
| Favorite revenue cycle KPI | CFB (candidate for billing) as it measures how quickly we are getting our claims billed. |
| Least favorite revenue cycle KPI | Denials; there are many that have no rhyme or reason and the administrative burden to resolve due to payor games and tactics is nauseating. |
| How automated is your revenue cycle? | We are around 50% automated with the opportunity to expand; some departments are more so than others. |
| How clinically integrated is your revenue cycle? | Very integrated; we take pride in being a clinically driven revenue cycle. |
| If you could change one thing about the Healthcare revenue cycle, what would it be? | The patient financial experience; as an industry, we can do so much better in meeting our patients where they are, being fully transparent on the care and cost and being more of a partner and guide. |
