Health System

Health System

William Anderson may rarely be seen or acknowledged by the public but his job affects the majority of people in the Louisiana community that have health insurance. He is the Director of Manage Care Contracting and his primary job is to generate revenue for General Health System in Baton Rouge. He does this primarily by working on contracts between the hospital system and insurance companies; however he must also interact with multiple departments within the hospitals to address daily issues pertaining to financial matters. His department is responsible for generating annual revenue in excess of $125 million.

Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, William started working at the age of thirteen and had to ride the public buses to work, which took an hour each way, downtown at a medical clinic where his father worked. He worked every summer and holiday until he graduated from high school. This instilled a great work ethic in him at a very young age that still shows today through his job and the amount of work he does every day. After graduating from high school, William went to work at an industrial testing company which evolved into the largest environmental lab in Louisiana called West- Paine Laboratories. He eventually went to college at Louisiana Tech University where he obtained BS degrees in History and Political Science.

When asked about how Hurricane Katrina affected his job, William gave out a slight laugh as he recalled what he went through during the days after the storm. The hospital he works at became an evacuation site for medical emergencies in New Orleans and a transfer site for patients in four New Orleans hospitals. They received helicopters over loaded with patients at a rate of four an hour along with patients coming by the bus load the next day. The two hospitals under General Health System also became treatments centers for New Orleans residents including children and continued to treat patients nine months after the storm. The amount of patients put an enormous amount of strain on the staff as well as finances and it was William’s job to find a way to get money from other states to keep up with the care being provided by the hospitals because their care was considered charity and they were seeing no reimbursement. Financial operations had to shut down because insurance companies that were head quartered in New Orleans were destroyed and no money was going in to the hospitals to pay for things such as medicines and life saving operations.

I asked William why he would choose a job that involved so much stress and he replied by saying, “I enjoy the challenge of negotiating contracts and making sure the hospitals are fairly reimbursed for the care they provide.” He also responded by informing me that he had worked for insurance companies and wanted to move to the health care side because he was more interested in the health care industry and wanted to work for the Baton Rouge community. He also finds it rewarding to be in the health care industry because he is contributing to the care being provided to the ill and enjoys that he works for a large company that employs over 3200 people but still feels like a family.

I concluded with asking William what other job he would be interested in doing and he responded with, “I would run a charter boat out of Key West and fish all day or run a Latin American restaurant,” but he didn’t think those jobs would be interesting enough for a student interview.