Mercyhealth's revenue cycle benefitted from putting staffers in the right roles

Kimberly Scaccia is vice president of Revenue Cycle for Mercyhealth Systems.

Photo: Courtesy of Mercyhealth

Kimberly Scaccia of Mercyhealth Systems, has focused on her staff since she took on the position as vice president for Revenue Cycle at the health system in March 2020, just as the pandemic was taking hold.

COVID-19 meant sending staff home to work while still concentrating on revenue for the Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois health system.

Four years later, Scaccia said she remains "hyper focused on people," which includes 487 full-time employees.

While technology and AI are as much a part of Mercyhealth's revenue cycle strategy as any health system, Scaccia has been building her team as a means of improving operations. Eighty-five percent of her staff now works in a hybrid mixture of at-home and in the office.

Working with her friend and mentor Geneva Schlabach, CEO at Limmit Technologies, the pair referenced the book, "The 6 Types of Working Genius: A Better Way to Understand Your Gifts, Your Frustrations, and Your Team" by Patrick M. Lencioni, to teach and train Scaccia's team. More importantly, Scaccia learned more about each of her 54 or so team leaders to find out whether they were in the right roles.

"Any time you think about your team and think about people around you trying to reach a goal, you have to ask yourself, 'Do we have the right people?'" Scaccia said. "You can have highly intelligent people, but if they're not doing the things that are bringing them joy, they won't perform at their highest capacity."

By asking questions and conducting surveys and personality profiles, employees began filling roles to which they were best suited. This included Scaccia. 

"What was surprising, I learned about myself. I used to be called a tenacious person. Tenacity is about bringing stuff across the finish line," she said. 

Scaccia learned there were others on her team who were more detail-oriented and better able to turn ideas into action and bring projects across the finish line. Staff leaders have taken over this role, and the model has trickled down to nonsupervisory positions.

"I've seen so much growth in my team since October," Scaccia said.

Staff is functioning at its highest potential, she said.

Revenue cycle has benefitted from process improvements that have allowed Mercyhealth to take back parts of the business that had been outsourced, thereby saving on vendor cost.

There was hesitation from staff at first, as there is for most job changes. But nobody lost their jobs. and filling a role that makes employees happy has resulted in greater job satisfaction and less burnout and turnover.

Scaccia is scheduled to talk about how to improve staff satisfaction in her session, "A Genius Way to Work: Unleash Your Team's Potential Today," on Wednesday, March 14, 2:30-3:30 p.m., Room W311A, at HIMSS24 in Orlando. Learn more and register.