University of Utah Health, the Mountain West's only academic healthcare system, announced that Sheri McPhee, CPC CPC-I, Quality Assurance and Compliance Manager for Revenue Cycle Support Services, was recognized by Modern Healthcare as one of this year's Top 25 Innovators.
McPhee was recognized for her leadership in transforming revenue integrity processes to optimize reimbursements and lay a foundation for sound financial health. Sheri and her team designed a forward-looking strategy that draws on the power of improved collaboration and technology-enabled processes to accelerate retrospective auditing practices and improve processes. This strategy aided in the recapture of nearly $60 million in at-risk charges and revenues, including COVID-19 related services.
"Healthcare organizations are facing a multitude of financial challenges in today's climate and need the best tools and processes available to ensure strong financial health," said Charlton Park, chief financial officer and chief analytics officer of the University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics. "Sheri's leadership has helped position our organization well for the future, and we applaud her for this exceptional achievement."
Successful retrospective auditing was made possible in part through the MDaudit Enterprise platform from Hayes, which the organization implemented in 2020 to automate many of the manual processes involved with retrospective reviews to support expedient responses to denials and audits.
This year's Top 25 Innovators championed solutions to reshape the industry in big and small ways, pushing boundaries to help solve healthcare's greatest challenges.
"There's never been a more urgent time for the industry to experiment with innovations that can reshape how care is delivered. The members of this year's class of Top 25 Innovators have introduced ideas that engage consumers in new ways, lower healthcare costs and take unique approaches to managing population health. The honorees were selected for their work in one of four areas: consumerism, cost reduction, population health and quality/safety. They were selected from nearly 200 nominations. We congratulate this class of honorees and look forward to following their careers," Aurora Aguilar, editor of Modern Healthcare.
The complete ranking is featured in the August 16 issue of MH magazine, and profiles of the honorees are available at ModernHealthcare.com/awards/top-25-innovators-2021.