Coach of the Quarter – Denise Dearing

Denise Dearing started with Palmetto GBA in 2019 as an Accountant II progressing to her current role as supervisor of the Time and Expense/Non-MAC Cost Accounting team. Denise demonstrates what it means to be a team player, a great leader, and a mentor. She is very knowledgeable and adept at all the teams' job functions. This gives her the ability to not only step in for a teammate but also to teach the necessary skills for each position. She takes a personal interest in her teams' training and is on hand to work with new staff, ensuring that each new team member has a full understanding of his or her job requirements and processes. Members of her team say that "You always feel confident with the advice received from Denise. Overall, she creates a great team environment with her employees. She checks in on the team regularly to ensure everyone is consistent with their workload and that collaboration and education are supplied when needed.”

Team of the Quarter - CFO Reporting/Financial Processing Team

The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Reporting Team is a diverse group of talented individuals. Using their extensive skill set, the team focuses on achieving their shared goals: providing excellent customer service, safeguarding Medicare assets, improving processes, meeting metrics, and ensuring successful audits. They accomplish these goals while successfully managing special projects using collaboration and knowledge sharing, providing effective training, and consulting management when needed.

The team strives to provide excellent value and service to its customers. In 2021, the team submitted eleven process improvements to streamline operations. In addition, the team resolved a reporting issue by implementing two Global Healthcare Integrated General Ledger Accounting System (HIGLAS) Configuration changes. To provide excellent customer service, the CFO Reporting/Financial Processing Team reaches out to providers regarding check applications, payment activity, and immediate offsets.

In addition, the team continued to support the company’s vision to positively impact their communities. The team has leaders on the Community Impact Team, contributed to Families Helping Families, and participated in acts of giving. Congratulations to the CFO Reporting/Financial Processing Team for being awarded the Division 54 fourth quarter Team of the Quarter.

Team Members: Randy Barber, Kasha Bells, Zack Dedonis, Jessica DelCastillo, Stephen Dunwoody, Yuliya Fida, Brandon Gangle, Sean Garrett, Shanika Goggans, Omar Haygood, Hunter Jones, Zacheus Magwood, Andrew McKay, Savannah Tolonese, Troy West, Robert Yates, Ericka Young

Process Improvement of the Quarter – Automating Mass Organization Restrictions Entries

Before this process improvement, the accountants spent a combined 270 hours manually keying in each organization restriction for the Jurisdictions JM and JJ MAC contracts, the Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) SMAC, and other non-Mac contracts. The accountants created a Costpoint compatible template that would allow adding hundreds of organizational restrictions to a project code at a time on a single spreadsheet. A master organization list with descriptions was added, followed by the incorporation of a V-lookup formula with a listing of the organization's description. This allowed the accountants to readily find the project codes in Deltek. They could then copy and enter all the organizations and their descriptions for each project code at one time instead of individually. Once the project code’s organizations are saved in Deltek, the column is hidden, and the V-lookup formula is updated for the next project code. By automating mass organization restriction entries in Deltek, the team saves more than 246 hours annually. 

Associate of the Month (October) – Zack Dedonis

Zack Dedonis is an Accountant IV whose work ethic and contributions to the team are notable. Zack maintains important routine processes daily and regularly maintains key metrics, divisional databases, and tolerance controls. Management relies on Zack's reliability and consistency for high-profile projects. Recently, he created an additional tolerance notification control to strengthen oversight on high-dollar claim payments. This adds an extra safeguard to control processes that ultimately help protect Medicare funds. Zack takes safeguarding Medicare funds very seriously and consistently enhances processes and gathers large datasets. While his extensive knowledge and abilities are impressive, he displays dependability, awareness, and a drive that exudes excellence.

Associate of the Month (November) - Amber Lee

Amber Lee, Accountant I, has been with Palmetto GBA for less than a year but is already known for the quality of her work. Amber personally handles and processes the non-MAC contracts. She learned her job duties quickly and is eager to learn new skills to help advance her career with the company. Amber's enthusiasm led to her cross-training on Time.Admin to back up the team. She also assists on timesheet signing day, demonstrating the competency of a much longer-tenured employee. After five months with the company, she took on some responsibilities of the Accountant II job duties to start training for that position. Amber is always willing to undertake new tasks. She is a great asset to the cost accounting department and Palmetto GBA and is a prime example of an employee who is not only hard-working but ethical in all that she does.

Associate of the Month (December) - Jeannine Pierce

Jeannine Pierce, an Accountant IV, joined Palmetto GBA in 2017 after 18 years with BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina. Jeannine strives to work hard every day in all her duties. She is thorough, accurate, and pays great attention to detail, which contributes to accurate proposals. Jeannine is a great source of knowledge and a mentor for new teammates She invests in their training as well as creates Excel training exercises to help new and existing teammates master skills needed for the preparation of proposals. She is one of the first to suggest process improvements and recently updated the business proposal review checklist. These improvements included reorganizing items into groups to provide a better flow to the review process, clarifying and expanding details to aid in understanding the requirements, removing obsolete items, and adding critical items. Further, she revised and took the lead to update multiple processes. In addition to all these achievements, her team admires her and says, "Jeannine is a pleasure to work with every day!"