With an extensive background in many facets of revenue cycle, hospital accounting, and finance, Bruce Preston, CPC, the Executive Director of HIM and Revenue Integrity at Grady Health System shares his career journey, current priorities at Grady, and what he’s looking forward to discussing with panelists and peers during the upcoming program.
Tell us about your professional background; what motivated you to start working in the healthcare industry, and what are some of the roles you’ve enjoyed in your career thus far?
Growing up, my mother worked in the healthcare industry, having started her journey as a Medical Technologist in a Blood Bank, and eventually going on to work in a hospital. I remember visiting her at work and being very comfortable in the healthcare environment, and following high-school, I took a position at a pharmacy delivering medication to elderly patients, starting my own career in the field. After that, I moved into a position working in the Radiology file room at an acute-care hospital, where I worked while pursuing my bachelor’s degree. During that time, one of the administrators really mentored me, and encouraged me to continue working in the healthcare industry after completing my studies.
I took him up on that offer, and he helped me obtain an entry-level position that allowed me to learn many facets of hospital operations, while focusing on accounting and finance. During my tenure, I’ve held roles including Financial Analyst, APC/Chargemaster Coordinator, CDM/Charge Capture Specialist, Project Manager Non-Technical, Director of Revenue Integrity, and now Executive Director, HIM and Revenue Integrity.
In your current role as the Executive Director of HIM and Revenue Integrity at Grady Health System, what are your main goals and priorities for your team as you look towards the year ahead?
My main goals always start with ensuring that we are following all new regulations that have come into effect, and maintaining strict compliance.
Beyond that, exploring how to incorporate automation into our workflow processes, evaluating what the right mix of automation and human resources that would support our work best, and also, denial reduction.
We are looking forward to having you join us during our Revenue Integrity meeting taking place March 26th on a panel that will address Improving Charge Capture Accuracy. Can you share one issue that you’re looking forward to discussing with the panelists and audience during the session?
I’m looking forward to discussing how charge reconciliation is handled at other organizations. Most of the issues that our Revenue Integrity team finds could be mitigated if more clinical departments dedicated time to reconcile their charges. However, we find that buy-in can be difficult, and so work to supplement charge reconciliation with rules and edits.
Thank you so much, Bruce!
Join us on March 26th to discuss improving revenue cycle performance and optimizing compliant reimbursement, where we’ll talk about everything from the impact of evolving reimbursement models and regulatory requirements on the revenue cycle, improving the accuracy of charge capture and claim edits, internal claims auditing, leveraging automation, and much more! Click here for details on the agenda.