Healthcare Resource Group Inc., which provides medical billing and temporary staffing services to hospitals and large medical practices, has expanded its Spokane Valley operation to position itself for further growth.

Within the next two years, HRG plans to hire about 60 more workers, adding to its 150 employees at the Spokane Valley facility. Nationally, HRG employs about 300 people, counting sales positions across the country and workers who fill temporary medical positions in admitting and registration, billing, collections, and medical records, mainly on the West Coast.

Fifteen of the planned new hires are expected to come onboard at the company's Valley office in the next 30 days. Also, by July 1, the company will move its small headquarters from Ponderay, Idaho, to its Spokane Valley site, at 12610 E. Mirabeau Parkway, in the Pinecroft Business Park. The Idaho office will close.

Tenant improvements completed in May added 7,000 square feet to the company's Spokane Valley office space, giving it a total of about 21,000 square feet of floor space there. The main operating unit located there is what HRG calls its OutPartnering Center, which handles outsourced billing, collections, and follow-up services for hospitals and large medical practices.

"We've got the capacity, so we want to add the employees," Chief Financial Officer Kris English says. "Our plans are to continue to grow."

Already, since 2006, the company had grown by almost 100 employees here.

English declines to disclose the employee-owned company's annual revenue, but says for the Spokane operations, "there's been 30 percent revenue growth each year since 2008."

HRG Executive Vice President Greg West says the company attributes much of its rapid growth since it was founded in 1994 to the reputation it has developed serving smaller hospitals and physician groups. He asserts also that with the current economy, "it's more cost-effective for hospitals to outsource."

HRG has worked with more than 400 hospitals and currently has about 100 active clients.

"We built a niche when we were small and working with very small hospitals," West says, adding that HRG has since gained contracts with mid- to larger-sized hospitals and medical practices.

"A contract we're just finalizing is with a big hospital chain on the East Coast," he says. He declines to identify the chain, but says, "We're starting to get some real momentum on the East Coast."

West says one of the company's early outsourcing projects assisted University of Washington Physicians, a group of about 1,500 doctors associated with UW Medicine. HRG helped the group in converting to a new billing system.

"We worked down their old system, cleaned out old accounts receivable, to bring it down to zero," he says.

Within a division that the company calls its central business office management and services, HRG has ongoing contracts with seven small rural hospitals for complete billing and collections services. Prior to working with these facilities, West says, most of them experienced some financial challenge.

HRG declines to disclose the names of all but two of the hospitals: Garfield County Hospital in Pomeroy, Wash., and Dayton General Hospital, in Dayton, Wash. Three of the seven hospitals are in Washington state, and the rest are in California and Nevada.

"Our mission is keeping these community hospitals up and running, to assure that these rural communities continue to have thriving hospitals," West says. "(Before), a couple of them talked about closing their doors. We turned around their cash flow. Now, all seven are thriving."

English says the company has proprietary software and systems to handle accounts for clients efficiently. She says HRG uses a secured computer network and remote access, and as part of that, the hospitals can view HRG's patient updates as they are entered into the system. At the same time, staff members at each medical site still have control over the accounts.

Founder Colleen Hays started HRG in the California Bay Area in 1994 and moved the company to the Sandpoint area a few years later. The company opened its first OutPartnering Center in Post Falls in 2003 but moved that operation to Spokane Valley three years later. Today, the company also has three small sales offices in Northern California, Southern California, and Seattle. Other HRG salespeople work out of home offices in other parts of the U.S.

West says the move to Spokane Valley five years ago for its main operations had a twofold purpose: to expand its size and to gain closer access to talent from Spokane's large medical community. These include key HRG management positions.

"We're able to get this superior talent in the Spokane area who have all worked in the hospital industry," he says.

In February, HRG announced it had named Steve McCoy as CEO and chairman of its board to succeed Hays, who is continuing to work as a company director and consultant. McCoy joined HRG as its president in 2003.

HRG operates as an employee-owned company, English says, a shift that happened in 2005. It gives workers stock ownership that goes toward their retirement accounts, after an employee has worked at the company for 1,000 hours in a year and following a three-year vesting schedule.

"Our company's contribution has been about 10 percent of compensation per employee per year since 2005, with no employee contribution (required)," English says.

English says that the company recently renewed its Spokane Valley lease for another five years, and that JMA Commercial Real Estate, which manages the business park, handled that tenant expansion remodel. HGR invested about $100,000 to $120,000 in furniture, equipment, and cubicle additions as part of that, English says.

The Ponderay headquarters had a staff of about seven in management positions, and three of them were able to move to Spokane Valley. The remaining positions will be filled here.

In addition to the administrative services for hospitals, the company has other divisions here, including ones to handle short-term contracts—lasting about six months to one year—mainly for accounts receivable, billing, and system cleanup projects.

HRG recently added a consulting division offering revenue cycle expertise, with a staff of about 10.

The company's call center division here handles what the industry calls "self-paying" billing, which is what patients owe medical facilities after insurance companies have paid their portion of a patient's bill. The call center offers financial counseling for patients with questions about their bills and bill collection, West says.

West says he measures the company's success beyond collecting every collectable dime. When hospitals remain financially strong, he says, then they can offer more services to a community. This includes what many hospitals provide—a certain amount of charity care for people unable to afford a medical emergency, he adds.

"If we make hospitals' finances viable, they can provide more services, so more people can get health care," he says.