Sutter Health Provides Non-Profit Health Care to California

Sutter Health is a non-for-profit community based healthcare and hospital system based in Sacramento, CA. This system serves patients and their families in more than 100 Northern California cities and towns, Sutter Health doctors, hospitals and other health care service providers join resources and share expertise to advance health care quality and access. The organization takes its name from California pioneer John Sutter whose namesake fort was one of Sacramento’s original European settlements. In response to the influenza epidemic of 1918, community leaders constructed the first Sutter Hospital in the vicinity of the fort, replacing an old adobe house that had previously served as a makeshift hospital. Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento occupies this site today.

Other Sutter Health-affiliated hospitals date back to the 1800’s and was some of Northern California’s earliest health care providers. In 1866, the predecessor of today’s Sutter Medical Center of Santa Rosa opened its doors to residents of Sonoma County. Today in the United States there are nearly 47 million Americans uninsured and 80 percent of that comes from working families. The article by Souza and McCarty, “From Bottom to Top: How One Provider Retooled its Collections,” covers how one of Northern California’s largestproviders, Sutter Health, approached implementing a new strategy to increase collections. In collecting payments from new patients, services provided, comes from the need to implement new strategies on how and when to collect the payments. Sutter Health have made a successful new program to implement and define most problems within their A/R department, developed solutions to their problems and have recognized the need to ensure the program is continuo...

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... be able to compare their results to that of their peers.

The way in which healthcare organizations need to implement a new strategy into their A/R departments comes from the realization that time of registration is the best time to ask the patient for payment (Souza& McCarty, 2007). Front end staff in the healthcare industry has not been responsible for collecting payment from the patient before services are rendered; that responsibility has been that of the A/R staff. There have been other healthcare organizations that have found solutions to problems within their A/R departments. Sutter Health was successful in identifying problems in their A/R department, finding solutions for those problems in their A/R department and implementing their solution program into their company. Sutter Health has set themselves up for continued success in their A/R department.