VHI Career Opportunities



EPICS Accountant

Virginia Health Information (www.vhi.org) is seeking an Accountant to work with a proprietary, web-based Efficiency and Productivity Information Collection System (EPICS) and resulting Access databases and queries. The successful candidate will collect and track Annual Historical Filings from over 400 hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers and nursing facilities, review and validate financial and statistical analyses, interpret the results and produce reports in various formats for internal and external use. The ability to assume responsibility for setting, managing and meeting deadlines while ensuring that the highest level of data accuracy in all work production is critical.

Data Collection
Data submission is predominately financial with considerable statistical and utilization components. The administration of the system requires the organization of the facilities for tracking complete, accurate and timely submissions.

The Annual Historical Filing consists of an electronic data submission, audited financial statements or internally produced financial statements, a signed copy of VHI' transmittal form/exception report and payment..

Data collection requires answering questions from the facilities on basic and health care specific accounting as well as the intent of the collection tool. It is necessary to be well versed on the operation of the EPICS web tool and resulting Access tables and queries. Communication with the facilities is made by phone and email. An annual file is maintained on each facility for the archival of the financial statements and other written correspondence. .

Review
Once data collection is complete the review stage begins. It is necessary to compare the financial portion of the EPICS submission against the financial statements provided by the facility. Comparisons are made on the balance sheet, income statement, changes in fund balance and changes in cash flow. The EPICS submission should match the supplied financial statements. If there are differences, the facility must be contacted for possible changes to be made to the master table.

Many of the collected statistical data elements are not verifiable from another source. It is necessary to develop comparison reviews using previous data from the same facility as well as trends from the full data set.

Dissemination
Three major annual publications result from the EPICS data collection and review process.

  1. ALSD - The utilization portion of the data collection is linked to a MS Access relational database which is then used to create a series of MS Excel spreadsheets for dissemination to the public.dick, please add here
  2. Industry Report - The annual Industry Report (IR), typically published in November, contains a series of MS Excel workbooks and is also made available to the public using the VHI website. Web publication requires a similar set of data tables.
  3. Detailed Financial Spreadsheets - The financial data collected is used to create a series of MS Excel spreadsheets with multiple worksheets. The creation of the report is begun using MS Access.
In addition to the three publications, the public often requests custom reports derived from EPICS data collection. These will require the use of current and/or archival data and are normally created in MS Access and forwarded to the purchaser using MS Excel.

Requirements
A minimum of 2 years' related experience is desired and a degree in accounting or related field is required. Additional requirements include knowledge of relational databases and reporting/analysis tools and demonstrated proficiency with Access and Excel.

The ideal candidate must possess a desire to help and be helped. Organizational skills and an aptitude for attention to detail; effective oral and written communication and interpersonal skills are essential to support project team members. Experience in the health care sector is preferred. Flexibility in response to a changing and evolving environment, deadline oriented; ability to work under pressure. Send resume to info@vhi.org



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