UC San Diego Health is the only academic medical center in San Diego, with approximately 17,000 employees, 1700 physicians, and over $2B in net patient revenue. Still, even with those resources at its disposal, the health system didn’t always provide the best patient financial experience.
Enter Terri Meier, system director of patient revenue, who leads the customer service, self-pay billing, and financial assistance teams as part of the overall revenue cycle department.
“My role is once the balance becomes due from the patient,” Meier says. “We are the face of the patient financial experience and, UC San Diego, takes it pretty seriously.”
Meier was recruited to UC San Diego Health about four years ago from Stanford health to overhaul it’s patient financial experience. She did two things right away that set a foundation for the success they’ve had ever since. The first, was bringing patient billing back in house and creating a single billing office across the hospital and physician billing. And secondly, and arguably more important, she made the customer service role the highest paid position within the revenue cycle department in order to attract better employees who could help patients with more significant and complex problems.
