4/16/26
Human Resources
Good morning. I’m speaking today about a resolution which is on the agenda for Human Services Committee today, which was sent to committee from Executive Committee last month. I think it would normally have come to this committee before Executive, rather than to Human Services. This resolution, coming from the Office of Management and Budget, asks for approval for the conversion of two positions at the ACC, a domestic aide and a medical coder, into one principal account clerk.
You may recall that I started waving a sign at you when the resolution came up in Executive, after public comment had already ended. The sign said “$30,000/month,” because I was trying ineffectually to remind the legislature that the county pays $30,000 a month to Infinitecare to perform the functions of accounts payable, accounts receivable and collections at the ACC, as well as for their consultancy. This is spelled out clearly in the resolution from 2021 which authorized their consultancy, based on the fact that at that time, the county was trying to perform those functions with 1 ½ staff to do the work of 4, and also spells that out in the consultancy contract, and it was further confirmed to me by the FOIL Officer yesterday, who emailed me that “We maintain a contractual agreement with a third-party vendor to handle billing services.” I had recently requested a current staff list from the ACC through FOIL, and the list I received yesterday included two financial positions at the ACC, which are currently filled. The first is an account clerk, which has been filled consistently. The second is titled “accounts payable,” which is a brand new job title there, and one which I am pretty sure did not go through this committee. I’m assuming that Infinitecare has been performing the medical coding, since coding is necessary in order to bill and the position has been vacant.
My point is that we have an active contract with Infinitecare to do the ACC’s accounts payable, receivable and collections, but now we have funded, through eliminating other positions, a new accounts payable position at the ACC, and they are yet again requesting a principal account clerk with this resolution. So, are we paying for the ACC’s billing services twice? Has Infinitecare suddenly become unable to do the billing, for some reason? If so, what exactly are we getting for our $360,000 per year? What is it that Infinitecare does that is still worth the 30K per month, as the ACC’s short term rehab wing is closing due to the decreased census? I should add that it seems counterproductive to be paying them at all when they owe us something like 7 million dollars. If you approve today’s resolution, we’ll have three billing staff at the ACC, so what do we really need Infinitecare for? We could outsource some billing functions to a company which is actually trustworthy.