Chris Bergman, CFO of Cincinnati-based The Christ Hospital, knows what it takes to run a hospital or health system's finance team. He also understands the challenges facing hospital CFOs today.
Mr. Bergman joined the team at The Christ Hospital in 2008. Before then, he served as CFO of Lansing, Mich.-based Sparrow Health System. Mr. Bergman also previously served as vice president of finance at Englewood, Colo.-based Centura Health. Before entering the healthcare sector, Mr. Bergman was a senior audit manager at Ernst & Young.
Question: What are some of the best practices for running the finance team of a hospital or health system?
Chris Bergman: First is identifying the right people. You've got to have good technical skills. I've got two great folks right under me who do a lot of our finance. They know how to translate what they're hearing into technical finance pieces. We can do a better job technically if we are talking to our operating folks. I need my team members to engage outside the finance world. We close really fast — in four business days — with a full set of reports. It's the routine practice of closing financials and make it short, then spend more time with analyses and value-based part of your business, so decisions can be made in a timely manner.
Q: What is the greatest challenge facing hospital and health system CFOs today?
CB: Volume, because financial performance is somewhat easier to manage in a growth environment. Not only is it the pure volume, but How do we want to account it and report it? One adjusted admission today isn't worth the same as one adjusted admission was yesterday.
Q: In the last year, what has been your greatest accomplishment as CFO?
CB: I think our (The Christ Hospital's) greatest accomplishment is that we have, I think, a very robust service line, financial reporting methodology. We've tried to take the manufacturing perspective. From one profit and loss statement, we've created six separate service line income statements. We continued to refine that over this past year because that gives us an insight into which service line is doing the best. I think our greatest accomplishment is having that at a very detailed level for our service lines to use to help them drive business.
Q: What is your advice for other CFOs?
CB: Make sure they understand the operations and make sure they don't get lost in the finance. The other advice would be answering the following questions: How do I take what I know and translate it into a way the person across the table will understand? How do we translate our knowledge into understanding?
Q: What is one goal you have for the next year and how will you achieve it?
CB: I have all three of my major payers up for renewal this year. I'm looking ahead to find a way to protect our volumes and rates while also looking for ways to partner with our payers to reduce overall healthcare costs. How do we adjust the rates, how do we find the win-wins with the payers, have a more rich, better dialogue with the payers, and also look at the market? It's really about getting into the qualitative aspects of the contract. That's my big goal.