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“People need people.” It’s a phrase Erin Hodson comes back to a lot. The vice president of revenue cycle at Inova Health is the person you go to when you need a cultural transformation. That might mean leaning into technological advances, new ways of working, or new models of making healthcare work, but if there’s been one constant in Hodson’s five promotions over thirteen years at Inova, it’s that people come first.
Hodson has created change for Inova Fairfax Hospital, its more traditional “Tower” serving every conceivable patient under the sun, and she’s been tasked with helping a revenue cycle team go “from good to great.” The VP says she needs to spark inspiration, so that’s where her focus lies at present.
Over the last three months, Hodson has taken stock of a massive team of 1,500 that hasn’t been together in person since the COVID-19 pandemic began. She’s found the team often feels undercelebrated and underrecognized.
“I was here, and we never understood what was happening on this team behind the curtain,” Hodson explains. “We’d get reports that you had to have someone translate for you, and it occurred to me that I need to be that translator for the rest of the organization.”
Hodson’s team handles virtually all backend hospital operations, including professional and hospital billing, cash posting, customer service, coding, and utilization review. Approximately 60 percent of the team works from home.
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Hodson took on this leadership challenge because she knew how critical these backend operations are. The patient financial experience is one of the fastest ways to ensure a patient either returns to the health system or leaves unhappy.
“If you don’t create a patient-focused experience, if you don’t make it easy for people to pay their bills, that will certainly impact your financial numbers at the end of the day,” the VP says. “But more importantly, that’s going to impact patients who should be coming back to you to continue their health journeys. You can taint their health outcomes by ruining this experience.”
And don’t get the VP started about the state of desperately needed payer reform. Hodson says she hopes to be sitting in front of Congress in the future, advocating—with some choice words—about the need for serious and lasting changes to the broken state of healthcare. That’s a heavier lift for the future, though.
For now, Hodson is implementing a clear strategy with her Inova patients and her team of 1,500. The first thing she did was put outsourcing rumors to rest—a more nuanced conversation than it sounds.
“There will continue to be evolution within this function, and that might mean people are going to change roles,” the VP explains. “But I was transparent that this means looking at your job from a different lens and the need to be growing along in your career as the role changes. I want to be part of your growth into new skills and abilities. This is a people-based business and I wanted people to know that I’m behind them.”
Hodson likens the complexity of the revenue cycle function to a Rubik’s Cube. When one part changes, it causes unintended changes in other areas. That complexity can create complacency because people don’t want to figure out all the moving parts. The more complex things get, the more likely people are to do the same thing they’ve been doing. The VP wants to change that.
“We can’t be afraid to fail fast and change how we operate,” Hodson says. “If it doesn’t work, that’s OK. It’s taking a lot of effort, but I believe in these people.”
“Erin Hodson’s commitment to serving her community and ensuring Inova Health System remains a leader in the industry is admirable,” says Martin Brown, MD, FACEP, president of the East Division at US Acute Care Solutions (USACS). “US Acute Care Solutions is proud to partner with Inova, and Erin has played a critical role in our long-standing relationship, allowing us to fulfill our mission: to care for patients.”
To know what Hodson will do, you need to know what she’s already done. When she came to Inova Fairfax Hospital’s “Tower,” she found a broken team. The Tower’s patients were often facing complex and chronic issues, and the hard work employees put in often felt thankless.
“This is a people-based business and I wanted people to know that I’m behind them.”
Erin Hodson
Moreover, Hodson says the seventeen nursing units she was tasked with overseeing with her CNO partner had only had five total leaders who were not interim. No one wanted the job because it seemed like a losing proposition.
“These great people were beaten down, their outcomes were in rough shape, and it seemed like a major reputational risk to take over leadership of any of these units,” Hodson says.
Hodson and her nursing partners helped create nursing and clinician co-leads and medical directors for each unit. She worked to develop a transparent, communicative, and welcoming culture that didn’t punish people for trying to do right by their patients. She made a Tower of Power Facebook group, creating a community for a group that desperately needed it.
The process is not instantaneous, and Hodson says it took everyone working together to change the culture. Vulnerability and willingness to try are key to Hodson’s success in driving transformation.
At the end of the day, Hodson brings order to chaos and transparency to obfuscation. She turns the good into the truly great.
USACS is the nation’s leading physician-owned provider of hospital-based emergency and inpatient medicine, including several specialties from emergency to hospitalist to critical care medicine. Serving 10 million patients annually in 400+ programs across 26 states, USACS is a practice for any clinician. As a proud partner of the Inova Health System, USACS provides top tier performance in quality, throughput, and patient experience. USACS’ reputation for excellence paired with Erin Hodson’s industry expertise further strengthens the partnership and has allowed Inova to confidently choose USACS to care for their patient communities across Northern Virginia.
