Muskogee Regional Medical Center’s billing office will be closing sometime in July, Chief Executive Officer Steve Mahan confirmed Friday.

Capella Healthcare, which operates MRMC, is centralizing billing and collection procedures for its 14 hospitals, Mahan said.

There is a transition plan. Retention packages or severance packages will be offered to MRMC employees affected, he said.

“We’ll be looking for positions internally — we don’t know what effect it is going to have on employees yet,” he said. “As of right now, the worst-case scenario is it might would affect 13 employees.”

Employees in the business office were spoken to Thursday, he said. They were to receive an internal release Friday, Mahan said.

Mahan said he was not aware earlier that corporate was going to make the decision, or he would have mentioned it when the announcement was issued recently on closing the behavioral heath center.

MRMC has to bill and collect, but with the automation and being able to centralize all billing and collection procedures for Capella’s 14 hospitals into one office, Mahan said it will have a two-pronged affect.

It will cut down on overhead, and money saved can be allocated to patient care, he said.

“Government billing regulations and compliance is becoming so thorny,” he said. “We are starting to centralize — if we have regional business offices, we only have to train one group of people instead of 14 groups on government regulations.”

MRMC spokeswoman Laurie Hoog said in order to gain some needed efficiencies, billing, coding, compliance and other office functions will be moving to the Hospital Corporation of America Patient Accounting System. HCA is not a part of Capella Healthcare, but sells contract services to hospitals, she said.

“MRMC is doing all we can to assist those whose positions will be affected,” she said.

They also will have the option to apply for a position with the HCA network, she said.

“These employees have been offered a retention bonus to help us through the transition over the next several months,” Hoog said.





Reach Donna Hales at 684-2923 or dhales @muskogeephoenix.com.