Foul-up in computer system costs med school $1 million

Friday, Jan. 15, 1999 | 11:52 a.m.

The centralized computerized billing system was abandoned last spring as University of Nevada, Reno officials grappled with the school's operating deficits. In many cases, bills went stale in the computer system and the school has been unable to collect on them.

UNR's financial chief told the Board of Regents on Thursday that the medical school will be lucky to recover $100,000 if the $1 million billing system is sold.

"It simply didn't work," UNR President Joe Crowley said.

Central administrators and clinic office workers were not adequately trained to handle the new system, and there was no backup system in place to ensure that billing and collections were kept current, they said. The University of Nevada School of Medicine counts on the clinical revenues it collects to cover the salaries of its teaching physicians.

The failed billing system was one of several problems outlined by UNR administrators attempting to assure university regents that the financially-strapped medical school is now on a more stable course.

While headquartered in Reno, the medical school runs much of its clinical program in Las Vegas.

The medical school is running an $845,000 deficit, but the program is expected to erase its losses by December, Crowley said. At one point last year, the school was behind $2.2 million in reimbursing UNR for the salaries of teaching physicians.

Crowley, UNR's finance chief Ashok Dhingra and other top UNR and medical school administrators took over the medical school's finances when problems were exposed to regents in April.

Since then, the school's dean, Robert Daugherty, has announced plans to step down this summer and take a faculty position for more than $227,000 a year. He will not be taking a cut in pay.

Daugherty's management of the school has been criticized by some medical school faculty members and several regents for the past two years, but Crowley has defended the dean's work.

Regent Doug Seastrand pressed UNR administrators Thursday for specifics of their bailout plan.

Afterward, Regent Howard Rosenberg said he was heartened that oversight of the medical school has improved, but he said he was disappointed the problems were left unchecked for so long under the dean's watch.

The school's old billing system is back in place, so collections are coming in at their expected rate of 44 percent, compared to 28 percent a year ago, Dhingra said.

Dhingra said the school's expenses have been lowered, and physicians have taken about $200,000 in pay cuts.