International member spotlight: Deepa Gigeesh aspires to reach new career heights

HFMA recently spoke with Deepa Gigeesh, revenue recovery officer at Sheikh Shakhbout Medical City (SSMC), Abu Dhabi, UAE. SSMC is HFMA’s first international Enterprise Solutions member, which allows SSMC’s healthcare finance staff to access HFMA tools, resources and education that align with their career development and business goals.

Please describe your current position and job role.

Deepa: As a revenue recovery officer at SSMC, I primarily handle denials management, which is the process of investigating, analyzing and resolving denied insurance claims. It is a crucial aspect of medical billing and revenue cycle management (RCM) that requires certain skills to increase efficiency.

Approximately three-quarters of healthcare financial and revenue cycle leaders acknowledge denials management as the most time-consuming revenue cycle task for their organizations, according to a 2022 survey conducted by HFMA and AKASA.

I credit my learning in this area to my mentors and the people who have guided me. I would especially like to thank my supervisor, Mr. Raghu Bemmanakodan, SSMC’s billing and recovery manager, for giving me the initial opportunity to gain expertise in denials management.

In addition, I provide training to other SSMC staff members and share feedback from payers to the physicians and coding team. I then report this information to team leads and my manager.

What are your goals related to your current job as well as your future career?

Deepa: Aside from revenue cycle processes, I would like to explore other areas such as costing and managerial accounting, financial leadership, physician practice, revenue management, data analysis and business analytics. With the help of my managers and the guidance of my peers, I aspire to build a career in data analysis and business analytics as well.

What do you hope to gain from your HFMA international membership?

Deepa: I am excited to be recognized as an HFMA certified professional by earning my Certified Revenue Cycle Representative (CRCR) certification. Through our recent HFMA Enterprise organizational membership, myself and the rest of the team have access to certifications as well as HFMA content offerings such as webinars and e-learning courses. By integrating HFMA’s tools and resources into our daily work, we raise the quality of our work and increase productivity. This helps us address increasingly complex financial needs.

In addition, HFMA provides a platform to help join various professional groups and communities with similar interests in the healthcare financial management areas. I am looking forward to developing more networking with my HFMA international member colleagues and to earn the credential of HFMA Fellow, known as the FHFMA. I am most interested in discussions with my peers that dive deeper into the topics of data analytics and business intelligence.

How do you hope to use your new skills to impact RCM and other work processes at SSMC? How will more skills in data analysis help SSMC?

Deepa: After working in this field for the last five years, I discovered that a certification like CRCR  and the Middle East region-focused CRCR-GCC, from an organization like HFMA contributes significantly to that experience. Throughout my time at SSMC, I hope to find a way in which data analytics plays a key role in helping the organization with decision-making that is automated and based on data collected.