1. You are responsible for the Payment Processing department which receives EOBs on a daily basis. Your employees take these EOBs and post the payments to the respective accounts, post any contractual adjustments and place any messages on the account that are appropriate.

Your staff consists of the following employees:

Jane Doe Posts 80 payments an hour Hourly wage rate $8.00

Joey Dolittle Posts 40 payments an hour Hourly wage rate $8.00

Michelle Mcquick Posts 120 payments an hour Hourly wage rate $9.00

Shelby Alright Posts 90 payments an hour Hourly wage rate $9.00

Brian Quigly Posts 100 payments an hour Hourly wage rate $7.00

All employees work a schedule of 8:00 to 5:00 pm Monday to Friday, with 1 hour lunch (not paid) and two 15 minute breaks (paid) daily. Brian Quigly is a part-time employee and only works 20 hours a week. An employee must work over 25 hours a week to be eligible for benefits. Benefit cost to the organization is equal to 25% of gross wages.

In an average month your department must process 62,000 payments to keep current. A payment consists of: (a) posting the dollar amount of the payment, (b) posting any indicated adjustment and (c) placing any messages on the account. There are a standard 4 work weeks per month for purposes of this problem

Job classifications within the organization include Insurance Specialists (starting wage $11.00 per hour), Coding Personnel (starting wage $12.00 per hour), Clerical Assistants (starting wage $6.00 per hour), Telephone Representatives (starting wage $8.00 per hour) & Payment Processors (starting wage $7.50 per hour).

Each of the full time payment processors spends 1 hours per day performing general clerical duties to include copying EOBs, filing paperwork and labeling folders. The maximum overtime any full time payment processor could work during any week is 20 hours.

ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:

1. Are you adequately staffed? If not how many processors do you need? List any assumptions made and show supporting calculations.
2. In what ways could you reorganize the department to reduce overall labor cost, including benefits, and still maintain your goals? Again list any assumptions made and show supporting calculations.