A Day in the Life of… Katie Butterfield, Revenue Cycle Specialist

Katie Butterfield is a detective. You might not catch that from her title, Revenue Cycle Specialist. But Katie, along with fellow Revenue Cycle Specialists Sarah Lamprecht and Devon Lasko, and their fearless leader Becky Lubinsky, are always on the case – hunting down payments from insurance companies, counties, and sometimes clients, so FCC programs can be paid for the hard work they do as service providers.

At the end of each month, FCC programs submit their billable hours, either through Procentive or via an Excel spreadsheet, to the Revenue Cycle team. The team submits this information to the appropriate payer, and ensures that we are paid correctly. Making sure FCC receives all these payments isn’t easy – sometimes an insurance company denies a claim, and the team must find out why. With payers having different standards for what documentation they require – medical records, modifier codes – it takes a solid knowledge of the job and frequently, good investigative skills to discover why a payment may have been denied and to fix the problem.

Katie has been honing these skills at FCC for just over a year. She joined FCC last summer, after Becky suggested that Katie would be a good fit for the position. Katie and Becky have long been taking on the billing world together, first as coworkers at Mayo Clinic. Katie hasn’t always worked in Revenue Cycle, however. While attending Central High School here in La Crosse, and after graduating in 2001, Katie found a love of working in restaurants. She has worked at Perkins, TGIFriday’s, and currently works as a cook at Rudy’s part-time some evenings and alternating weekends. Katie also spent time working as a manager at Music in Motion, a small wedding DJ business! While there, she managed half of the DJs, created their schedules, worked with brides and grooms (and a few bridezillas), and managed the music library. But she longed to have her weekends back and a more traditional schedule, and also wanted to make a little more money to support her girlfriend, Brianna, and two kids, Zayden (13) and Zavyer (10). She was happy to come back to Revenue Cycle when she heard about the position at FCC.

 

6:00-6:30 am – Katie wakes up, either to the alarm clock or to her dog, Forte, licking her face. She takes Forte outside first thing, then feeds him. She’ll spend a little time on her phone, checking Facebook and the weather. Since it’s summertime, she doesn’t have to get Zayden and Zavyer off to school, but she does set out food and snacks for them for the day, along with laminated pages where she writes down their daily schedules. Katie gives Forte a treat before she heads out the door – she has to distract him, because she can’t stand to see him look sad that she’s leaving! On her way to work she’ll stop at Kwik Trip for a fountain soda.

8:00 am – Katie arrives at work. She has a bowl of cereal or a breakfast sandwich as she starts her day. If it’s a Monday, she’ll run a report of all the payments and denials that happened the week before. She and the Revenue Cycle team try to look for trends. Recently, for example, there were a lot of Outpatient La Crosse claims that were being denied. Time for that detective work – the team discovered that Gundersen had made a change to their system that was causing all the OP denials. Knowing this, they were able to fix the problem.

10:00 am – Katie might pause looking at her reports to answer a call. She answers all kinds of phone calls in a typical day. It might be a client calling to pay a bill or ask a question, or an FCC employee with a billing question. Recently, a program coordinator called to inquire whether a certain client could schedule both their FCC appointment and an appointment with another agency in the same day, as it would be more convenient for the client. Insurance companies sometimes have restrictions regarding whether they will pay for a client to have two appointments in one day, depending on the type of appointment. Katie wasn’t sure of the answer right away, but did some detective work and found that the client could in fact schedule both appointments for the same day and both agencies would be reimbursed for their services.

12:00 pm – Lunch break! Katie usually brings leftovers from home, or has cereal. Once or twice a week, she orders lunch with Devon – Iguana’s, China Star, maybe Hmong’s Golden Egg Roll. Tasty.

1:00 pm – On Wednesdays, Revenue Cycle has their weekly team meeting. They might discuss what their biggest challenges have been lately and make a plan together to help each other with them. Recently they identified that it was hard to find time to work on policies & procedures, so Katie suggested they take some time to meet away from their desks and work on them as a group. They are planning to do so soon.

2:00 pm – Katie might have a flash of genius about how to improve a task or process. She likes a mantra she took from working at Mayo, “work smarter, not harder”. She appreciates that Becky gives her a lot of freedom to think outside the box and try different solutions. One such idea Katie had was to create a Revenue Cycle homepage where FCC staff can get the billing information they need. Katie maintains this web page and keeps it up to date with recent meeting minutes so all can stay informed.

3:00 pm – Katie might take a moment out of her day to add some humor to the workplace with a little prank. Her last one was to hide Becky’s water bottle in the microwave and giggle while she watched Becky looking for it. But she has to be careful, because she gets pranked too! At a lunchtime potluck earlier this year, Katie was talking about her extreme fear of birds. A few days later, a couple of magazine pages with pictures of birds had been teasingly left in Katie’s mailbox. She took them around the 5th floor trying to find the culprit, and finally found out who pranked her –it was Tita!!

4:30 pm – Katie is done for the day, and drives back to her home in Onalaska.

6:00 pm – Katie might work an evening shift at Rudy’s. If not, she spends time with her family and those close to her. Brianna is now her fiancée – Katie proposed to her in March, and they will be getting married in fall of 2018! Katie often spends time helping her mom, who lives nearby and who hosts family meals on Sundays. In addition to the boys Zayden and Zavyer, Katie’s nieces Makayla and Alexa are very important to her as well. Additionally, Forte the boxer/pug mix isn’t the only pet. Katie and her family have two cats, Finn and Ferguson.

8:00 pm – Katie is a huge music fan and enjoys going to concerts on a weekend or a day off. Recently, she traveled to Milwaukee to see Pink at Summerfest. She has also seen Lady Antebellum, Brad Paisley, Miranda Lambert, and Macklemore. Katie also really enjoys photography, and has taken some senior photos and wedding photos. She has been bowling since age 5 and is in a bowling league in the fall and winter.

10:00 pm – Katie likes to wind down by catching up on some TV shows.  She is currently watching the new season of Orange is the New Black, but also loves HGTV shows and old re-runs of Friends.  After catching a few episodes, she gets to bed to rest up for another day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Katie, thank you for sharing a day in your life with us and for all the hard work you do for FCC!