Finding Hidden Revenue and Building Human Connection: A Conversation with Jimmie Richmond of Banner Health
Download MP3Well, everyone. I'm Daniel Williams, senior editor at MGMA and host of the MGMA Podcast Network. We're really excited. We're gonna start a new series where we're talking to MGMA members, and some of those members might be on an advisory board that we've created here at MGMA. And this is our first interview to talk to one of our advisory board members.
Daniel Williams:We've got Jimmie Richmond . Jimmie and I go back. We have been on the MGMA Book Club together. If you've heard me talk about the Book Club previously, own podcasts. We've had some of the authors from those books own the MGMA podcast as well.
Daniel Williams:But Jimmie is also in Colorado. We were just talking prior to this that we should have had Jimmie come on down to Denver and meet us here in studio. We may do that sometime in 2026. We love that energy when we have somebody live. But for now, let's just welcome Jimmie to the show.
Daniel Williams:Jimmie, I just wanted to say, hey, we just were in the book club yesterday. We spent a good bit of time talking about the latest book, but welcome to the show.
Jimmie Richmond:Oh, thank you. Thank you. It's a pleasure.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. So you and I have known each other for at least two years because that's when we started the book club. I can't remember if we met through the book club or through MGMA, but where I wanted to start then was just to share a little bit about the practice that you're in now. And I know that you're in Greeley, Colorado. It's in Northern Colorado.
Daniel Williams:It's pretty darn close to the Wyoming border, right? Is that correct?
Jimmie Richmond:It is. Yeah.
Daniel Williams:So share with us a little bit about what your role is and what the practice is there in Greeley.
Jimmie Richmond:Oh, sure. Sure. And I am a virtual worker working remotely, and I'm currently a supervisor and financial analysis consultant for the Banner University Medical Center in Phoenix. What a dream job to be able to, when I moved from Phoenix to here, to keep that. And it's amazing position.
Jimmie Richmond:And specialty, I'm a member of finance, but we specialize and focus on identifying and recovering unbilled revenue. And that's a heavy lift. Right? Right. And so this involves work in the EMR and a cross section with revenue cycle, revenue integrity.
Jimmie Richmond:My small team looks for the root causes of why aren't we billing everything out. And so there's hard dollars attached to that work. And it's hard work. It's tedious, often delicate because we're dealing with providers and execs and operational managers, but it is always rewarding.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. That is so cool. Now we're going to touch on a lot of topics today, I'm really excited about this, but I want to go back to something that you and I talked about. We both have a Mississippi connection. Anybody who hears me do this show says, Where are you from?
Daniel Williams:Because sometimes when people think South, they'll say, you're from either they'll lump Texas into the South, which us true Southerners don't do, and Texans don't like that either. They're gonna know we're from Texas. We're not from the South. But people will say they think I'm from South Carolina or North Carolina. I go, No, I'm from Mississippi.
Daniel Williams:You also have a Mississippi connection. But when I hear you talk, I don't hear this. Have you gone through training or something? How do you not have a Southern accent?
Jimmie Richmond:Well, I lived there for fifteen years of my adult life. So I came from Colorado. Interestingly lived ten plus years in Texas, so I know of what you speak. Texas is its own country.
Daniel Williams:That's right.
Jimmie Richmond:But when I get tired, I start to my r's become very pronounced. They sound like a's.
Daniel Williams:Yep.
Jimmie Richmond:So like the word Tyler, you you would go, oh, I gotcha. So I have to work on proper pronunciation.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Well, is really cool. Yeah, I just spent the past week in Alabama. Somehow I grew up in Mississippi, but my family, my parents and my siblings and some nieces and nephews and grandnieces and nephews all live in Birmingham now. They just sort of all wound up there, which is really interesting.
Daniel Williams:I spent almost a week in Alabama. So I know of what you speak, if I get around, if I'm tired or if I'm around my siblings and my parents, then it starts rubbing off on me. I may even sound for everybody a little more Southern in this episode than I normally do, but it's great having you on the show, Jimmie.
Jimmie Richmond:I appreciate that. And I've lived in Birmingham for two years, so I can picture that whole area and the warmth and hospitality of South sticks with you, I think.
Daniel Williams:It does. Always in your heart. I'm getting a Johnny Cash vibe here, Jimmie. You've been everywhere, man. Everywhere I name you've been there.
Daniel Williams:That is so cool. So let's go through a little bit of that healthcare journey and then we'll bring us up to the present time. What got you into healthcare in the first place? Is this something you dreamed about as a kid? Is it something that came through at college age or after that?
Daniel Williams:Where did that come from?
Jimmie Richmond:It wasn't on the radar at all. I had moved to Mississippi and was looking for a job, and I accepted a a temporary job answering the phone at a surgery center under construction.
Daniel Williams:Okay.
Jimmie Richmond:So if you can picture, you know, a building that does have its walls, doors, and a roof, but nothing else, there I sat in the middle of a room with a card table, a chair, and a phone. Didn't seek it out, but it has been good to me. I think of those first days there, the administrator had asked me in between calls to help with their policy and procedure manual. I applied some word processing skills to that project and completed it in three days where she was thinking three, four weeks. They liked me.
Jimmie Richmond:They saw something in me and promoted me even to open other surgery centers. Then my career over twenty five years blossomed. I think it's been good to me in the sense that my persistence to overcome obstacles, I believe, and more for the ability to connect with people. Patients, team members, executives, doctors is what gets me to those connections that help pull me through the tough stuff.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. I would think call centers are kind of universal, whether you're in the healthcare field, if you're working for Verizon or Amazon or whoever, you're getting people calling in and sometimes not in a super great mood. How did you prepare yourself and how did you handle that kind of being thrown into the fire and answering those phones from people who maybe they want an answer, but sometimes the answer's frustrating to them. My first job was with one of the phone companies, Bell South in Birmingham, and I went through manager training in a call center and yeah, that was quite an experience. So talk about your experience.
Daniel Williams:What was that like, that sort of baptism by fire?
Jimmie Richmond:Well, I brought forward my experiences from my prior career of of hotels
Daniel Williams:Okay.
Jimmie Richmond:Hospitality, and five years of call center in in Dallas. So in those call centers proper, I always got the customer service positions because nobody wanted to do that. It was tough stuff. So thinking of those skills of, Hey, I hear you. I'm not the one that can solve this issue, but I can get it started for you.
Jimmie Richmond:And often in the shouting and the anger, sometimes just have to let them run it through and then say, hey, I hear what you're saying. Try to connect. It's been a reoccurring theme in my career, making connections. Okay. Temporary stop with me.
Jimmie Richmond:I'll get you to where you need to be. Just pulling those things forward from experience.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. So I mentioned that you and I I'll jump ahead because I think this connects the dots here with a call center. I mentioned earlier that you and I are in the book club together. Just for anybody, shameless plug, reach out to me, dwilliams@mgma.com if you want to join us. Join Jimmie and me and a lot of other MGMA members in there.
Daniel Williams:And we have really fashioned the book club in a way where it's a lot of leadership type books. It's also books that really work on personal and professional growth. And so I would think a lot of the things that you're talking about right here is that really being able to be empathetic, being a good listener, being a deep listener, and understanding people's problems, that has served you well. Because those are some of the skill sets that we talk about in a lot of those books. Anything you want to share about that?
Daniel Williams:Because we have really connected on that with several of our books here.
Jimmie Richmond:If you are not enrolled in participating in Book Club, it needs to be your very next task. Honestly, connections to other people, hearing their shared experiences and insights as the book kind of guides us on these conversations is so valuable. And the camaraderie also is amazing. We've all come to know each other a bit, and the table that we sit at always has open chairs. So, yeah, Daniel's right.
Jimmie Richmond:Please consider joining the book club.
Daniel Williams:Jimmie, thank you again for the shameless plug in the MGMA book club. But Jimmie, you're speaking the truth because we have made some incredible connections there. And I think that is one of the things it's one of the issues for practice administrators and healthcare leaders, that we want to be a conduit. We want to be able to help solve some of those problems for the MGMA members. And I have never been in a product or an opportunity where I've seen that really grow, where in January it'll be two years with the MGMA Book Club, and we've got a lot of regulars, and then we got some people that drop in, drop out, and that's kind of the rule of book clubs.
Daniel Williams:I think the only thing we don't do is have wine bottles next to us. At least I haven't seen any visible. If somebody has it in their coffee mug, they're hiding it. But we have some great discussions, a lot of vulnerability, a lot of people coming into the discussions where they will share, Hey, we had this problem and this is how we solved it. And it's kind of relating to what's going on in the book we're reading.
Daniel Williams:Or, Hey, I'm having this problem. Has anybody had this? And can you help me solve that? I mean, that's some of the discussions we're having there, Jimmie.
Jimmie Richmond:And validating your feelings. And I I would mention too that even if you haven't completed the book, your presence is welcomed at that table to to discuss that.
Daniel Williams:Yeah.
Jimmie Richmond:It is. It's a it's a wonderful validating experience.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. And making those connections, again, it's not to be an infomercial about MGMA, but that's where I really try to think about it. We are an association. My background is people have learned who have heard the podcast, come from media. I was a journalist, a writer for, gosh, since 1994.
Daniel Williams:And then I came to MGMA. Still wearing an editor's hat, but I'm serving an association. And so with that said, you can think about, well, we're a lot of things to a lot of people. But one thing I do like to ask people is, who are MGMA members, how'd you hear about it? How'd you join in the first place?
Daniel Williams:Tell us your sort of MGMA origin story here, Jimmie.
Jimmie Richmond:Oh gosh, reaching way, way back. Early on, I was closely working with executives and practice managers that often spoke of MGMA. And so being curious is like, Well, that sounds like something I'd like to get involved in. I was told, Oh no, that's for the elite, not for you.
Daniel Williams:So
Jimmie Richmond:later in life, in my mid fifties, I went back to school and in the courses, this was for public health administration and policy. And particularly in the finance courses, MGMA came up for the benchmarking type of exercises. And so I got a reduced cost student membership, and that started the journey where I was able to attend webinars. And then fast forward a little bit further, you know, still feeling those messages early in my career that, oh, you don't fully belong here. Yeah.
Jimmie Richmond:Could I go to graduate school? I did it, and I excelled And MGMA along this journey of going back to school very generous. I applied for a couple grants and scholarships to help pay for books here and there. And that was significant to me to get those. They weren't just awards.
Jimmie Richmond:They were a vote of confidence to a person that was trying to find a place to belong. So that's significant, that vote of confidence. I'm so appreciative of that.
Daniel Williams:Yeah, I love that. That is such a cool story. If you could pinpoint one thing, what's something in your work with MGMA, might be the continuing ed work you've done, might be the book club, might be something else. What's something you can really pinpoint and go, that's a really cool connection I made, or that's something that made me better in my career. Is there anything you can point to in that way?
Jimmie Richmond:There is. And I'm going to give you a brief handful.
Daniel Williams:Five
Jimmie Richmond:things. So certification preparation, prior to getting fellowship, there's the certification and board exam track. That's significant study. That level set me. Then using some of the tools, of course, the webinars, data dive to pull that benchmarking information out, best practices that come from MGMA, apply that every day.
Jimmie Richmond:Conferences, got my first taste of a conference in Denver last year. Wow. Again, there was the connection, the force of being together with like minded people. Amazing to stand with those people. And walking across the stage in recognition of of getting the fellowship was significant.
Jimmie Richmond:Reaching back to that voice going, oh, you don't really belong here to, yes, I do. And look at the people I'm standing with. That was remarkable. And the Fifth Item is book club. Honest to goodness.
Jimmie Richmond:That is significant to me.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. There's so many things, and I'm glad that you and I can continue to work together. We do the book club once a month. Now you're on the It's the Human Resources Advisory Board. Now I want to just take a step back for everybody.
Daniel Williams:You probably have heard me talk about this, but you're going to hear me talk about it a lot. MGMA has gone through and is going through a pretty major organizational restructuring where we want to really connect with the MGMA members. We want to provide you with the tools, the training, the development, everything that you need to continue to flourish in your career. In one way we did that for the seven years I've been at MGMA and the years other editors have been there, we covered everything. And what we're doing now is we're having these vertical topic areas.
Daniel Williams:And the one that I'm the senior editor working with is human resources and compliance. And the reason we're doing that is it allows us to take a deeper dive into that area. And I couldn't do that alone. I've got my specialist that I work with, Colleen Luckett. Y'all have heard her on the Week in Review podcast over the years.
Daniel Williams:And we've worked closely together in building out a human resources advisory board. Now, Jimmie, you may be a bit of an anomaly there. You had mentioned earlier you're on this financial side, but you raised a hand to volunteer to be on the human resources and compliance one. I asked you about this in an earlier conversation, but if you don't mind sharing that with our listeners here. How does your work that financial side, how does that play?
Daniel Williams:And what's the role you wanna play on a human resources advisory board?
Jimmie Richmond:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, first of all, the volunteer opportunity. I'm a lifelong learner. Great place to spend some of my time with people that are looking at the topic from different points of view.
Jimmie Richmond:And isn't that your stress testing material, for instance?
Daniel Williams:That's
Jimmie Richmond:it. You need as many eyes as possible. And reaching back through my healthcare career, I've worked in surgery centers, clinic, billing companies, and this fine finance perspective always touches compliance and sometimes the HR. So I've got those experiences from the past and a view forward from a finance point of view, which is to provide the analyst analysis to the decision makers to make informed decisions. So it supports that perfectly and it gives me a new set of wings, I think.
Daniel Williams:Yeah, that is so cool. And I'll just I'll put that out there, everybody. If anybody wants to be involved, we do have these different advisory boards. We've got a financial one. We've got a private practice one.
Daniel Williams:We've got the human resources and compliance one. And I think the operations one is the other one that I hadn't touched on yet. And we also have one that's a strategy one that we're building out as well. So we've got some different advisory boards. So again, as Jimmie was saying, if you want to get involved, give back or just continue to grow, look at those volunteer opportunities at MGMA.
Daniel Williams:In our remaining time, let's see what else we want to talk about, Jimmie, because you and I, when we get going, we could just keep talking and talking. So let's look at some of the challenges you're seeing. What's a challenge? Because there are a lot of challenges in healthcare right now, but you and I had a conversation about a week or two ago, and I wanted you to just expand upon that. What's a challenge that you're seeing that you would like either through MGMA's lens or just through healthcare leadership lens, begin to address and help?
Daniel Williams:I don't know if we can ever make some of these problems go away, but maybe make them a little smoother, a little less painful.
Jimmie Richmond:I think where I see things around me, both in my environment, in my near past, and then as a consumer of health care. Right? Here's, you know, here's what I observed brewing out there. Patient access, employee and provider retention and recruitment, and those are those are intertwined.
Daniel Williams:Yeah.
Jimmie Richmond:I you know, since COVID, I feel like it's so difficult to be a patient. Mhmm. It's so difficult to be that employee that is facing the public, you know, at that front desk or on the phone. It's very difficult to be a provider, and you have to manage the margins to keep your doors open. And so all of these forces, I think, need to be addressed in a very compassionate way and evaluated for each of those things to ensure financial viability and address those vulnerabilities, recognizing our humanity and each other as a patient, work in the front desk and as a doctor.
Jimmie Richmond:I think compassion needs to be a part of our analysis.
Daniel Williams:Yeah, I love that. I have one more question. It's unique to you because of all the times we've worked together and met together in the book club and other places, I knew that you worked remote, but I figured your practice was in Greeley. I didn't know it was in Phoenix. So that's a unique perspective there, and it is a way that as practices are having trouble really getting the right staff, being fully staffed, getting the right people in place, they're having to look outside the box.
Daniel Williams:In the old days, I know when I started working my first job in Birmingham, you had to be in Birmingham. You couldn't live in Tuscaloosa or Auburn or Atlanta or somewhere, you needed to be where you worked and go into the office every day. A lot of things are changing in that way. For you to be really connected with that team, what advice would you give to our listeners, whether they're thinking of hiring people who might be remote or in a hybrid situation or thinking about doing that themselves? What's the best bit of advice you'd give our listeners here to make sure they get that right?
Jimmie Richmond:Have very good tools such as we're using right now. We use Teams, the Microsoft Teams to have that connection. And it actually works out to improve productivity substantially. I find that I work more.
Daniel Williams:Okay.
Jimmie Richmond:And I work without interruption. And if I need to contact someone, there they are as long as they're available or I can put a a meeting request on their schedule, and we can see each other and collaborate. So this whole industry of collaboration tools is there. And so that's your backbone. Right?
Jimmie Richmond:That's the the commute that you take to work is through that. Now you need to connect with people. So be sure that you are putting on everyone's schedule reoccurring meetings where you're touching base with each other. And it's pretty nice to begin with the niceties of life. Hey, how you doing?
Jimmie Richmond:What you got going on? And let's get into the business that we need to conduct. So connection, I think it's connection. Through this is how we get and recruit you know, the Daniel Williams of the world out there. Right?
Daniel Williams:That is true.
Jimmie Richmond:That is true.
Daniel Williams:I'm blushing, Jimmie. Well, Jimmie Richmond, Banner Health, I wanna thank you for joining us on the MGMA podcast today. Thank you so much.
Jimmie Richmond:So much a pleasure. Thank you, Daniel.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. So everybody, we're going to put some information in the episode show notes. I want to give you an opportunity, if you weren't aware of the volunteer opportunities, I'm going to put that out there for you. For the book club, December, I believe it's going to be December 17, we're going to meet again. We just met yesterday for our December book.
Daniel Williams:It's going to be Align the Mind. Align the mind. That may sound familiar to you because the author, Britt Frank, we had owned our MGMA podcast back in May. So we're going to talk about that book. And I thought that around the holiday season, things can get a little stressful.
Daniel Williams:Even though it's an amazing time, it can be a little stressful. And this book is really going to focus on how we can work with stress, how we can work with burnout and the different challenges we have there. So Align the Mind. And if you want to join that book club, I'm going to give you a direct link there as well. And you can go to mgma.com and search book club.
Daniel Williams:You can search volunteer opportunities, and you can find that on the MGMA website. So until then, everybody, thank you so much for being MGMA podcast listeners.
