The Committee agreed to invite to a future meeting someone from Public Health to discuss distance education, since this division continues to progress with this type of technology. The Committee also agreed that the Applied Physics Laboratory should have representation at the meetings. Discussion with Dr. Edward Miller Dr. Miller distributed an analysis of charges and collections for the clinical practice association. Dean Miller provided a brief history of the billing process beginning with 1993, when a clinical patient would receive various bills for services provided by Hopkins. In 1997 a consultant was brought in and clinical practice billing was reorganized.
Individual departments can now solicit any vendor that uses an IDX system for billing.
The Dean worked to establish buy-in as well as establishing benchmarks. With these changes clinical practice is seeing billings increase along with a decrease of days in accounts receivable. A question was asked whether Hopkins rate of collections was consistent with our peers. Dean Miller stated that it was consistent with the peers who have a similar mix of Medicare and Medicaid patients. Dr. Miller also briefly discussed the Office of Inspector General audits and mentioned in particular, the audit of the University of Pennsylvania.