2009 News
Northwest Partnership Team Wins Award for Medical Coder & Billing Compliance Business Plan at UNC at Chapel Hill's Management Academy for Public Health (MAPH)
Chapel Hill, NC -- Due to increasing budget restrictions, local health departments in North Carolina have been forced to look at innovative ways to save money. Part of saving is improving departmental efficiencies. Several Incubators have focused primarily on clinic efficiencies within their departments. The Northwest Partnership sought, instead, to improve billing to and collections from insuance companies. Since each company has its own set of rules and guidelines, duplication and costly errors can occur often. In 2008, the Northwest Partnership provided scholarships to a regional team of managers to participate in the Management Academy for Public Health to develop a plan to educate and train staff on these rules and guidelines to help patients get the most out of their insurance policies.
This Spring, this unique team was awarded with the Management Academy for Public Health Blue Ribbon Project Award for this innovative project, called Addressing Medical Billing Challenges in Public Health. Members of this outstanding team were: Samantha Ange, Trish Belton, Candice DuVernois, Inge Leonard, Jan White and Debbie Widener. This unique team of public health professionals from the Northwest Partnership region was funded to attend the year-long public health leadership development program to complement Incubator-funded efforts to develop an effective billing management model to maximize billing procedure efficiencies and increase health department expense recovery.
The 50-page business plan, prepared by the award-winning team, includes detailed information on the project including an executive summary, statement of need, marketing and business strategies, industry analysis, competitors, partners, risk and exit plans, and a detailed appendix with a variety of helpful complementary documents. To learn more about the Northwest Partnership project, and see additional resources and tools developed, follow this link to the Northwest Partnership page. To read the award-winning business plan, please click on the link below:
Addressing Medical Billing Challenges in Public Health (pdf)
Ange, Belton, DuVernois, Leonard, White, & Widener (March 2009)
The Management Academy for Public Health (UNC at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health & Kenan-Flagler Business School) prepares teams of health professionals for new management challenges in community health. Management Academy seeks to build public health professionals' skills in managing money, people, data and partnerships. Every team writes and presents a public health business plan designed to address a key public health problem in their community. To learn more, click here.