Business Office

The Business Office (BO) supports, monitors, manages, and reports on all aspects of fiscal planning and responsibility. The unit includes Accounts Payable/Accounts Receivable (AP/AR) & Fiscal Analytics.

• The AP/AR Unit is tasked with processing vendor payments, reimbursement of employee travel expenses, billing and receipt of provider assessments, collection of pharmacy assessments, drug rebate receipts, and other miscellaneous receivables. This unit is also responsible for reconciliations, financial reporting, tracking of department assets, and assisting with audits.
• The Fiscal Analytics Team formulates and performs analysis of the programmatic budget, periodic financial reporting, and ad-hoc research requests providing analytic support for DVHA leadership. This team monitors program changes to determine financial impact, assists with programmatic budget preparation, and ensures financial reporting alignment with federal and state regulations.  Maintaining expertise in federal rules and regulations related to the provision of Medicaid Services under existing and future waivers.  Ensuring close collaboration with project staff to promote compliant cost allocation strategies while maximizing federal revenue. 

• Department of Finance & Management
• State of Vermont Treasurers Office
• DVHA Vendors
• DVHA Contractors
• DVHA Grantees
• Agency of Human Services
• Agency of Digital Services
• Office of the Attorney General
• AHS CO
• State of Vermont Legislature – Joint Fiscal Committee

The Business Office is responsible for estimating, implementing and tracking Medicaid budget while projecting and presenting caseload as well as expenditure estimates.  This unit deals with the Legislative budget requests, the fiscal analysis for all Medicaid changes, and production of all departmental expenditure reporting using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and statutory basis of accounting principles.  In the last year, we have implemented improvements to the method for Incurred but Not Reported (IBNR) calculations and per member per month calculations. The team is responsible for communicating changes to the required reporting to the fiscal agent and ensuring that those changes are implemented in accordance with AHS’ needs. 

Within the accounts payable responsibilities, the Business Office is engaged in an improvement project to move to electronic document storage and process routing.

SFY22 priorities are to:

• Work to maintain and improve upon performance as measured by five (5) key performance indicators.
• Proactively manage anticipated very large SFY22 budget deficit and lingering SFY23 budget pressures.
• Work with AHS, Departments and Gainwell to facilitate SFY22 Close-Out given very tight timeline.
• Facilitate transition to full-risk MCO and reorient the Business Office accordingly.
• Partner with AHS, Departments and ADS to effectively manage APDs to maximize FFP.
• Complete Lisa Schilling’s transition from the Business Office Financial Director to DVHA’s MES and Medicaid Data SME.
• Develop career paths and promotion opportunities for Business Office mid-level managers, to create more distributed leadership responsibility and to reduce key person risk.
• Support high-visibility DVHA initiatives (e.g., Act 48, Hep-C, 12-month postpartum coverage, etc.).