Lindsay Saelinger Mendiola, CPA, MBA, CMPE

By Vanessa Orr

Providing healthcare services has become even more challenging since the pandemic; not only are organizations still trying to recover from revenue losses, but technology and talent challenges continue to impact day-to-day operations. The good news from a medical practice perspective is that these challenges can be overcome – but it takes foresight and flexibility.

“You have to be nimble and proactive. In healthcare, there’s always potential for a new fire,” said KIDZ Medical Services Chief Financial Officer Lindsay Saelinger Mendiola, CPA, MBA, CMPE. “But when you put your people and patients first, it becomes much clearer where you need to prioritize.”

Mendiola has seen her share of challenges since joining KIDZ in 2021. The South Florida multispecialty practice, which cares for neonatal, pediatric and women’s health patients across 15 office locations and 19 hospital partner sites, has had to work through a number of issues, including a recent cyberattack that shut down one of its claim and payment processing partners, Change Healthcare’s, data highway.

Change Healthcare acts as a clearing house for 15 billion medical claims each year – accounting for nearly 40 percent of all claims.

“This impacted claims submission and payment processing, leaving physician groups and hospitals with serious cashflow problems and threatening patients’ access to care. It also meant that physicians couldn’t place electronic orders for prescriptions to many pharmacies,” said Mendiola. “It was probably the biggest cash crunch challenge I’ve navigated in my career so far; we received 50 percent or less of our regular revenue stream for nearly two months.”

KIDZ worked with its EMR partner, Athenahealth, to find different routes for claims submissions and is still working to ensure that systems, processes and cash flow are rebounding after the cyberattack. “Even though the data highway is now back online, there’s a huge backlog of claims, so things aren’t back to normal yet,” said Mendiola. “Thankfully, we have a strong balance sheet and were able to cover all ongoing operations. This single attack was incredibly impactful on healthcare economics in the U.S.”

Another challenge facing KIDZ – and just about every healthcare practice – is attracting and retaining physician talent.

“It kind of defies gravity when you look at compensation surveys and the median pay by specialty – the vast majority have gone up year after year. The specialists we employ are in high demand and short supply, so the competition is steep. And while higher salaries help employees keep up with inflated costs of living, it’s a massive challenge from the employer perspective,” Mendiola said, noting that as costs continue to go up, payors continue to reduce reimbursement.

South Florida’s current housing crisis doesn’t help, as it affects young physicians looking to relocate to South Florida to work for KIDZ. “After fellowships, physicians want to live in a nice community where they can afford a home and maybe raise a family. Even for well-compensated physicians, this is difficult in our current market,” Mendiola added.

It’s clear that the pandemic put a huge strain on the healthcare system nationwide, with a number of specialties seeing a major decline in volume. There has also been a reduction in births at a number of hospitals that KIDZ supports.

“Due to these challenges, a number of our hospital partners closed or reduced their labor and delivery service,” said Mendiola. “We’re still seeing a lot of disruption.”

KIDZ continued to press on during these disruptions, while learning to be more efficient. The organization maintained telehealth as an ongoing patient visit option, which continues to comprise 10-15 percent of its patient volume. “We are also working to leverage more advanced documentation accelerators in our EMR to help save our providers documentation time, and we are exploring other technologies that incorporate patient self-service and AI,” said Mendiola.

“Documentation is a primary pain point for most physicians, so anything we can do to ease that burden makes their work a little less stressful and frees them up to care for more patients,” she added. “Our team has transformed our IT and analytics processes in a short time period and I’m really proud of that.”

This includes the “big lift” of switching KIDZ’ EMR and billing systems, creating one system for the organization’s 200 physicians and 30-plus locations. “Before, it was very cumbersome to pull information together from disparate data systems; now we have more data insight and can evaluate challenges more proactively,” she said.

Mendiola has also taken the lead in implementing technological and operational enhancements in revenue cycle, practice management, human resources, accounting, financial management, credentialing and patient experience, and played a pivotal role in the launch of MOMZ – KIDZ’ outpatient OB/GYN division.

“As a mom myself, I’m really pleased that we are able to provide a full range of OB/GYN services in our Homestead office and at Baptist Health Homestead Hospital,” said Mendiola. “There is a huge need in that community, and so far, MOMZ has received very positive feedback.”

While there will always be challenges in healthcare, Mendiola looks forward to continuing to help KIDZ meet them head-on. “KIDZ touches so many people across so many communities. It’s rewarding and fulfilling to help grow and continuously improve the organization so we can continue to provide outstanding care and touch the lives of children and families,” she said. “Plus, there are some very exciting things in the works; we’ve got a lot more to do.”