Sabrina Sims Joins Brooks Rehabilitation as Vice President of Revenue Cycle

Sabrina Sims, BA, CPC-H, CHFP, recently joined Brooks Rehabilitation as Vice President of Revenue Cycle. Moving to Jacksonville from North Carolina, Sims brings strong leadership skills in revenue cycle operations, coding and health finance systems leadership with a proven track record in insurance carrier contract negotiations, patient intake and systems consolidation.

Sims loves her work, especially in generating patient and staff satisfaction. She loves how streamlining financial paperwork for patients enables them to get the care they need, and she loves how efficient financial systems enable staff to feel connected to positive patient outcomes, even if they are not giving direct care.

“I love what I do,” Sims said. “I love taking care of patients, I love the interaction with people, I love empowering staff. Even though employees in the business office think they don’t have a lot to do with patient care because they’re not clinicians, they do have a lot to do with that patient’s care because it all really all comes down to the finances. Patients remember how they were treated by everyone in an organization. A lot of people don’t get the health care they need because of the finances, so if we can take care of their needs, there’s an improvement in patient and employee satisfaction.”

Watching the staff at Brooks give patients hope, whether through the care from nurses, physical and occupational therapy or understanding their finances is part of what drew Sims to Jacksonville.

“When I looked at Brooks and the caring and rehabilitation they had done on several patients, they gave them hope. They didn’t give up on people.” Sims said. “Then when I came for the interview and was in the hallway, I saw how staff interacted with patients. They didn’t know who I was, it wasn’t just putting on a show, and I could see that they were just so caring. That was just so cool to me.”

Sims’ interest in the medical field is part of a three-generation legacy. As a child, Sims had planned on following her mother’s footsteps into nursing, but early on in her studies realized that her expertise with numbers might be a better way to help with patient care.

“I thought I wanted to be a nurse. I got through most of it and then came a pediatric phlebotomy class. I came home and told my mother that I was going to flip to numbers,” Sims said. “She was not happy at first, but she understood. She had been with St. Vincent’s for 34 years, she had been there since she was 14 and had seen it all. She has missed seeing me get this far, but I know she’d be proud.”

That family legacy continues in Sims’s son, a freshman at UNC Charlotte, who is looking to make a difference in the medical field through Bio-Engineering, creating prosthetics that look and feel like a person’s own skin, part of their own body.

Sims looks forward to using her own sense of caring and expertise during her tenure at Brooks. She anticipates “getting in the trenches” to help staff and to making financial systems at Brooks work better between the different sectors and divisions. Knowing that Brooks plays a strong role in the Jacksonville community, she is sure that through observation and engagement her leadership abilities can make a difference. “There are great people who work here, and there is already collaboration,” Sims said. “During my tenure here, I’d like to see more centralization and collaboration between departments. I’d like staff to know that I appreciate the work that they do. To me if you observe a lot of things around you, you’ll be able to change a lot. I can do a lot by observing and changing, representing Brooks so that we’re not just seen as a structure by the sidewalk.”

Her motto is, “If it goes in clean, (meaning registration/patient intake/orders), it comes out green (meaning revenue/cash).” And while that may be a motto for the revenue cycle, it also applies to how Sims sees health care finance applications affecting patient care and patient hope.

“I care about the fact that you walked in sick and that you will walk out whole. It’s not about a bill, it’s about making them the best that they can be when they leave out, it’s about making sure that the experience is great.”