Staff Spotlight

Sally Thibodeau is Yale Medical Group (YMG)’s director of the central business office — a career one might think twice about pursuing. The work can be high pressure and high volume. But Thibodeau is cut out for it: She is bright, quick, focused, positive, warm and personable. After 14 years, she comes in every day eager to get to work.

“Our office is a busy, busy place,” she said. “Sometimes my job is a matter of holding all the balls up in the air at the same time. Every day we have to look at what the priorities are. But for the most part, it’s the most rewarding job I’ve ever had.”

Thibodeau lives in Branford, and juggles her busy job with raising two children and teaching catechism at her church. At Yale, she has an office on the 6^th floor of 300 George Street, where she works alongside a key team of people who direct and manage credentialing, compliance, practices, reimbursement and payer management, among other services.

Her responsibilities include front-end and centralized internal billing and collections in the following areas: central registration; claims management, insurance processing and cash applications; customer service and internal collections. Her typical day might include helping a frustrated patient figure out why an insurance company is rejecting a claim, or helping a front desk employee refine his or her telephone skills.

In her years with Yale Medical Group, Thibodeau’s work has included:

• Developing a centralized registration department that now registers approximately 40,000 patients a month
• Managing five primary insurance teams that forward 40,000 claims per week to more than 60 contracted carriers, and handle more than 8,000 rejections per week.
• Managing a patient call center that services roughly 15,000 patient requests per month.
• Developing an internal collections department that contacts patients on all self-pay accounts.

Thibodeau works closely with Susan Roddy, who joined YMG around the same time and is now associate director of the central business office. Both believe in an open-door policy, leadership by example, promotion from within, and mutual respect both in and out of their own group. “Staff can come see us and talk about anything, and they know it will be kept confidential and will be dealt with,” said Roddy. “Sometimes it helps when one of us walks over and tells someone they’ve done a good job. We draw on people’s strengths. A lot start out in registration, where they are C-level employees, and move up to D Level.”

One of Thibodeau’s most important achievements has been to lead the implementation of Symposium, the automated phone call distribution system that was first launched in YMG in 2001 and is currently being fine-tuned throughout the practice. The system provides standardized metrics for categories such as dropped-call rates and calls per day in real time and historically, and practices are reporting much success. From June 2011 to June 2010, Yale Internal Medicine Associates (YIMA) saw its dropped-call rate go from 9 to 3 percent, and its average wait time go from about one minute to 44 seconds.

Another achievement is the development and leadership of a customer training program for all clinical departments. In this area, “respect for people is important,” said Thibodeau. She recalled a practice administrator who was receiving poor feedback from patients. “She was knowledgeable and wise, and really passionate about her work, but she had issues on phone—to the point of being abrupt and rude. We found the problems were fixable—for instance, she needed to look at how she greeted people and how she said goodbye. We practiced a few times, and she saw the difference. I think it would have been such a loss if this person had left.”

Thibodeau has personally provided training for staff in orthopaedics, and Connie Rinaldi, practice manager, said, “I find her to be the most amazingly helpful and supportive person. Even when the problem is not in her realm of responsibility, she always puts the patient first.”

The most recent YMG annual report shows collections on patient accounts are up and rejections are down. Patient registration is included in Press Ganey patient satisfaction surveys, and reviews have been positive. While many people contribute to this success, Ouida Haynes, supervisor, central registration, spoke highly of her director. “Sally manages it because she has a vision and she’s committed. She knows what works well, and she knows what she needs to do to make it work,” Haynes said.

Thibodeau recalls one night in September 1997, “Marianne Dess-Santoro (COO of Yale Medical Group) had to talk me into coming to Yale. She was very convincing that evening. I instantly took her advice without reservation. Our business relationship has continued to grow over the years. Marianne has and continues to teach me so much every day. Words cannot express the admiration, loyalty and respect that I have for her. She is truly a gift beyond measure for me and the entire YMG organization."

Beyond that, Thibodeau believes it all comes down to having a great team of people and taking the time to work with them. “Sometimes I say these 200 people keep me coming here every day, and it’s true, I just love them,” she said.