Enterprise membership spurs substantial growth in HFMA certifications at Geisinger

The opportunity to obtain certifications is one of the foremost benefits of HFMA Enterprise membership. Enterprise Member Organizations encourage staff who have opted to become HFMA members to pursue the certification opportunity.

This strategy is exemplified by Geisinger in Danville, Pennsylvania, a leading regional health system whose count of individual HFMA Enterprise members on its staff now exceeds 800. And even as the health system has only just begun its campaign to encourage staff members to become certified, the number of staff either pursuing or having achieved certifications has already grown substantially:

• 150 certification processes underway since the July 2018 launch of Geisinger’s Enterprise membership
• 65 certifications completed in that same time period
• 320 HFMA certifications total among Geisinger’s Enterprise member staff

A focus on the certification opportunity

“Here at Geisinger, going through the career ladder, one of the requirements is to become certified through the CRCR [Certified Revenue Cycle Representative] certification,” Babilon said. “So what that has allowed me, early on in my career, is to really understand the full lifecycle of the claim, from preservice to time of service to post service. A lot of time in our roles here we only see a portion of the lifecycle of claims. The CRCR certification really helps me to see the whole lifecycle. And it helps me understand if a claim does deny, or if we have issues, what points along the lifecycle of the claim I can go to, to try to improve it up front.”

Babilon also was impressed by the certification process. “Actually, I have two certifications,”he said. “The first one is the CRCR. Geisinger does a great job of preparing us for the CRCR exam. We have training sessions where we go  to review material. I think HFMA has a great online component as well. And secondly, I have the CHFP [Certified Healthcare Finance Professional] certification. When I first came here to Geisinger, I saw a lot of the senior management were CHFP certified. I looked at that as the gold standard. I wanted to get to that level within my career. I think it’s very important to be CHFP certified.”

The value of Enterprise Membership for Geisinger

Becoming an Enterprise Member Organization has proven meaningful for Geisinger in many ways, Babilon said. He expounded on two.

“First, Geisinger is a very big organization, so if we think about each year just re-enrolling all the different members of HFMA that are with Geisinger, it’s a very big process,” Babilon said.

Moving to an Enterprise model eliminated the annual re-enrollment process for Geisinger, according to Babilon.

A second major benefit for Geisinger has been the ability to get HFMA’s message out to its organization, Babilon said. “We recently had an Enterprise introductory meeting where we brought the finance, healthcare and clinical professionals together to talk to them about what Enterprise [membership] offers. But also, we were all in the same room together, and we were looking at presentations. So it’s a great step in the right direction to get those three different parts of the organization together talking about HFMA and what it can offer.”

To share your story of how you have benefited from HFMA membership, or to tell us what benefits of HFMA membership are most important to you, contact Heather Hennessy.