Hartford Business Journal

8 Hartford Business Journal • August 10, 2020 • www.HartfordBusiness.com merling doesn't want to count on government help should another pandemic arise down the road. To that end, Connecticut Chil- dren's has entered into an ambitious new business venture that could be its most significant to date. The hospital, working with a pri- vate-equity backed company called Guidehouse, recently formed a joint venture company called Children's Health Consortium that aims to provide revenue cycle management services to a dozen or more U.S. pedi- atric hospitals over the coming years. The venture doesn't involve any upfront capital commitment from Connecticut Children's. Instead, the hospital will transfer approxi- mately 170 back-office employees to the new company. Revenue cycle management includes the software and processes used by providers and their vendors to document, bill for and collect on services provided. "There's a real science to that," said Shmerling, whose hospital has the highest mix of Medicaid patients in the state. "So it's important on the commercial side that we're really great at what we're doing, because there's just not enough of it. There's very little margin of error." While the need for revenue cycle employees can fluctuate signifi- cantly from month to month, they are a fixed expense for Connecticut Children's, as well as many of the standalone pediatric hospitals across the country that the new company hopes to court as equity partners. During the pandemic, the need for those workers declined as pa- tient volumes nose-dived. Connecti- cut Children's furloughed a number of revenue cycle staff, along with hundreds of others (the majority of which have since come back to work), Shmerling said. The idea behind the Children's Health Consortium is that Con- necticut Children's revenue cycle employees will pick up the slack during busy periods for other member hospitals, and vice versa. The shared ownership model is meant to seize on economies of scale, and equity members will only pay the new company for the services they've received, rather than shouldering the fixed salary and benefit costs of an entire department alone. The consortium will officially launch early next year, and aims to take on a yet unnamed second inves- tor hospital right away. From there, it will be a sales game. Shmerling said he's confident the venture can fill an unmet market need, but it will be crucial to con- vince other hospitals to buy in. Shmerling said it might eventu- ally net up to $12 million per year for his hospital. Equity stakes Washington, D.C.-based Guidehouse was formed in 2018 from the sale of PwC's government sector division to Veritas Capital. Late last year, Guidehouse bought national consulting firm Navigant for $1.1 billion. The company has been working with Connecticut Children's for the past seven months on improv- ing its financial operations. After COVID-19 struck Connecticut, ex- ecutives pitched the joint venture to Shmerling and his team. The new partnership is similar in some ways to one Guidehouse forged with a Florida-based adult hospi- tal system several years ago. One key difference is the Connecticut Children's-led partnership plans to offer equity stakes to other children's hospitals, rather than just a vendor relationship, according to Ian Stew- art, a managing director at Guide- house, who said the equity structure creates an opportunity for children's hospitals to lower their costs in a way that may not be possible under a vendor-customer relationship. "This is really about independent systems that do great work by themselves, but by joining together they can invest and create what I think is operational excellence in revenue cycle," Stewart said. Jonathan Stone >> Bruised, Not Broken continued At Middlesex Health in Middletown, the independent hospital's surgery volumes have come back full force from COVID-19, reports CEO Vincent Capece Jr. PHOTO | HBJ FILE EXPERTS CORNER What part of your pandemic business should you keep? By Jonathan Stone A s your organization scrambled to adjust to COVID-19, you may have implemented temporary solutions that could continue to be of value to the business going forward. With restrictions lifting, compa- nies can pause to identify any posi- tives that came out of this experi- ence that may lower expenses or boost rev- enues on a long- term basis. In doing so, it's also important to assess if your business may have gotten by with technology practices in the short term that could pose cybersecurity risks if left in place permanently. Remote work as a business strategy Many companies that were able to have employees work from home during the pandemic found that not only did work get done, but produc- tivity actually increased. Now would be an excellent time to review performances and poll em- ployees about their experience work- ing from home while sheltering in place. If you identify individuals who enjoy working from home and excel at it, allowing them to stay remote could free up space in the office. Some of the cost savings from not having to provide permanent work sta- tions for certain employees can be redi- rected to improving their home office technology, which may further elevate their job satisfaction and outcomes. Provide a computer When U.S. companies began ask- ing workers to start telecommuting en masse, some found it easiest for employees to use their personal PCs or laptops for work. Many companies didn't have a choice — all laptop models common- ly used for business were out of stock by mid-March. However, continuing to rely on computers owned by employees poses privacy risks for individual workers and cybersecurity concerns for the company as a whole. Companies typically provide laptops to remote workers, but there is no reason desktops cannot be provided to individuals whose roles require additional computing power. IT staff or partners can keep these machines patched and up-to- date without physical access. For workers splitting their work time between the office and home, a practical investment can be provid- ing identical docking ports that easily connect the machine to other hard- ware, such as a monitor, keyboard, mouse and camera to create the same user experience in both locations. It's especially important that lap- tops commuting with your employ- ees have full-disk encryption in case a device is lost or stolen. Secure network traffic Home networks are typically not as hardened from a security perspective as workplace networks. For employees working from home on a long-term basis, the best practice is to segregate the home network with a secure gate- way to be utilized only for work. This is a low-cost hardware invest- ment ensuring that if an employee's home security camera or smart TV is breached, hackers will not gain ac- cess to their work computer. A more extreme option is to provide home internet service for employees that is segregated and secured from day one. This can include a segment of the network for personal use as a perk. Don't forget voice communication Poor phone reception can make it seem like an employee working from home is telecommuting from the moon. It is best not to rely on the cell reception at employees' homes and to provide hardware that utilizes a quality connection over the internet. This is typically inexpensive and can take the form of an IP handset, which plugs directly into the network and can be used at home or the office, or a USB or Bluetooth headset in conjunction with software on the work computer. In addition to call reliability, these technologies can allow remote em- ployees to make calls that appear to come from the office, receive calls at their former in-office phone number, and dial four-digit extensions to reach colleagues. If employees using their cell phone at home is the most viable option, look into enabling Wi-Fi calling. Jonathan Stone is chief technology officer of Kelser Corp., an IT consulting firm in Glastonbury.

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