Staff Spotlight: Kathie Hughes
For Kathie Hughes, billing is about much more than sending out statements and collecting payments. As Family Service Rochester’s Billing and Accounts Receivable Specialist, she sees her work as another way to help clients get the services they need and to support the staff who provide them.
Kathie works with clients on billing questions, helps them understand insurance issues, sends bills, and works with insurance companies to resolve claims. She also works with staff to identify errors and make the billing process run more smoothly.
“A lot of the questions are usually understanding their bill,” she says, including deductibles, coinsurance, and information an insurance company may need. Sometimes the most important thing she can do is help clients understand whom they need to contact next.
That work matters to Kathie because she knows financial concerns can become a barrier to receiving services. When insurance denies a claim for something beyond a client’s control, she wants to understand why and see whether the issue can be resolved.
“I guess in some ways it’s kind of like that quiet fighting for the client,” she says. Many people do not understand their insurance well enough to know why a claim has been denied or how to challenge it. For Kathie, resolving those issues helps validate both the client’s need for the service and the work staff have provided.
Kathie grew up in Pine Island and earned an accounting information systems degree from the University of Minnesota Crookston. After working a while, she returned to school at Winona State University, earning a degree in elementary education with middle school math. She taught for five years before joining FSR. Her teaching experience helped shape why she chose FSR. She saw firsthand the need for mental health services and liked FSR’s mission. Although she did not have the credentials to provide those services herself, she saw an opportunity to help people access them.
By taking on administrative and billing concerns, she can give therapists and other staff more time to focus on the work they are passionate about. She can also help clients with payment plans and sliding fees so financial concerns do not overwhelm the reason they came to FSR in the first place.
Kathie has been with FSR for a little over seven years. She started as an accounting assistant and recently moved into her current role, which includes expanded accounts receivable responsibilities and credentialing. She helps licensed staff complete the insurance approval processes necessary for their services to be billed and also assists with revalidation paperwork across different parts of the organization.
One thing she especially values about FSR is its community focus. “We’re here for the right reasons,” Kathie says. “We try to do the right thing.” She sees that reflected in conversations about what the community needs, where services are lacking, and how FSR can work with other organizations rather than treating them simply as competitors. “It’s always community centered and community first.”
Outside of work, Kathie enjoys camping, spending time with her family, watching her three children’s activities, exploring and visiting lighthouses. And after seven years at FSR, she says the work has changed how she sees people’s experiences.
“You hear the whys or you see the situation and you have a better understanding,” she says. “I think it just makes you a better person in general.”
