Health Agency Will Get $2.56-Million Data System

Ventura County’s Health Care Agency, which recently paid off $18 million in emergency county loans and rebounded from severe financial difficulties, has received approval from the Board of Supervisors to buy a new $2.56-million computer system.

The computer will be funded by dipping into other county accounts, including a $1-million reserve established last year to bail out the county’s outlying clinics.

But that reserve was never tapped, and revenues from the Ventura County Medical Center, the county-run hospital, now offset the clinics’ annual $750,000 losses and still leave a surplus of almost $1 million, Health Care Agency Director Phillipp K. Wessels said Tuesday.

‘Tremendous Turnaround’

“It’s a tremendous turnaround,” said Pierre Durand, the agency’s director of finance. “The performance has been outstanding.”

George Mathews, the county’s information service director, said the health agency’s 10-year-old computer system “just doesn’t do the job any more.” He said some billing falls through the cracks because the agency records patient treatment on one computer, bills the treatment on another system and doesn’t always integrate the two.

During last year’s fiscal crisis, the system was jury-rigged to generate bills “on a temporary, emergency basis,” Mathews said, but he acknowledged that billing efforts “in the past have been incorrect or incomplete.”

“With the new system, we are attempting to make the bills more accurate,” Mathews said.

He also said the new computer will make it easier to update Medicare and Medi-Cal billing so they conform with ongoing legislative changes regarding reimbursement.

The request by health officials raised the eyebrows of county Supervisor James R. Dougherty. Dougherty said he did not question the need for a new computer system, but still is baffled by the health agency’s apparent ability to turn an $18 million debt into a $1 million surplus in one year.

Explanation Requested

He has asked health care officials to submit a financial report on the topic.

“I want to see the explanation of how it got turned around so fast. I just want to make sure it’s really true,” Dougherty said.

Dougherty said he does not think that health officials have misled him. But he chided them for their claims that $1 million was needed to keep the agency’s six clinics operating.

“You should not treat the board in a casual fashion,” he said. “Other funding requests that had merit were turned down” because the county received incorrect information.

Wessels, who took over as health care agency director last October, told the board at a Tuesday meeting that the erroneous estimate stemmed from the lack of accurate financial records.

Audit Hit Management

Last summer, a county audit of the health care agency revealed that billings had fallen 18 months behind, that the agency had accumulated millions of dollars in unrepaid county loans and that it suffered from poor management.

In the midst of the audit, agency head Dr. Sarah L. Miller retired. She has not been accused of wrongdoing. Meanwhile, county officials laid off 200 of the health care agency’s 1,200 employees and trimmed 35 of the medical center’s 145 beds.

The new computer system will monitor the health care agency’s annual $73-million budget that is disbursed among the medical center, its outlying clinics, two mental-health care facilities, a drug and alcohol program and the county coroner’s office.