Editors’ Note

Eugene Colucci assumed his current role in 1989. Prior to joining Greenwich Hospital, Colucci served as the Chief Financial Officer and Controller of the Mount Vernon Hospital in Mount Vernon, New York. He holds a Bachelors of Business Administration degree from Niagara University in Niagara Falls, New York and a Masters of Business Administration degree from St. John’s University in New York, and is a Certified Public Accountant and a member of the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants.

Would you give a brief overview of your role within Greenwich Hospital?

The areas I oversee are general accounting, payroll, accounts payable, reimbursement, budgeting, and forecasting, as well as patient billing, all registration areas, medical records, case management, IT, materials, and telecommunications.

In light of the current economic crisis, how much of an impact have you seen on the hospital, particularly from a financial and budgeting point of view?

We have seen a big impact, but it’s also very volatile. We chalked it up to things like people postponing elective procedures. They may have been let go and become un- or underinsured. We saw our bad debts go up and our free care go up. But after the first quarter, we started to rebound.

Has becoming a regional player made the financial issues more complex?

In addition to becoming regional, we also became affiliated with Yale New Haven Health System, which gave us a bigger footprint among Greenwich, Bridgeport, and Yale-New Haven hospitals. Greenwich did well on its own years ago, but joining Yale New Haven Health System was a great marketing strategy that has also produced a lot of revenue as well as savings on expenses.

Within the hospital, is there close coordination from segment to segment, and is it heavily integrated when you look at working across the different aspects of the hospital?

Very much so. Our six product line directors all manage different sections. We meet with this group once a month, to discuss cost-containment and to make presentations to both financial and clinical leaders. Finance and the clinicians each discuss what the other is looking for. I’m on a patient safety team, which is clinical, but I also co-chair a subcommittee for data, so I understand what data the clinicians need. So there’s a tremendous correlation between finance and the clinicians.

Looking back to when you joined the hospital, could you have imagined this to be a place you would have been for this long, and what is it about the culture that has made it a place where you’ve wanted to spend so much of your career?

When I got here, I thought I’d give it four years because I wanted to move to a very large teaching hospital. But what I walked in on was a very good feeling I had working with Frank Corvino. So I felt strategically, for my career, it was a great move for me to stay. I am involved with strategy and continue to feel challenged.