Sue Zumwalt, CMM, CPEDCS, HITCM-PP

Sue began her career in the insurance field in 1974. While working on the insurance end of the medical field, she was involved in many aspects of the industry including claims adjudication for Champus, Medicare, self-funded plans, HMO’s, PPO’s, EPO’s, IPA’s, and Indemnity plans as well as third party liability recovery. These experiences have proven priceless when she flipped to the physician end of medicine in 1988 as a biller for a two physician orthopedic practice.

After 8 ½ years of billing, revamping the billing department, and successfully cleaning up their outstanding AR, Sue was asked to become the office manager for a local pediatric office.

During these past 18 years with Pediatric Associates of Stockton, Sue has seen tremendous changes to the once small pediatric office as it grew into the largest private independent pediatric practice in San Joaquin County. She currently manages 4 pediatricians, 4 nurse practitioners, and a staff of 17. But the most dramatic change is the use of technology in the physician’s office. Sue embraces technology and has been a leader in her community by bringing her practice out of the dark ages of the paper chart world to one of the electronic check in, patient portal, and electronic health records age, years before meaningful use or incentives.

Sue uses her insurance background to get those claims paid. This has led to an average A/R of 12.25 days and a collection rate of 99.725% but acknowledges this is not possible without the help of her wonderful staff whose experience totals more than 322 years.

By pure luck, Sue learned about PAHCOM in 2000 and joined shortly thereafter. Even though there is no chapter in her area, she continues to look to PAHCOM for direction and guidance from it’s multi-talented membership by participating on-line with the list serve and by attending conference each and every year.

She earned her CMM in 2011 and HITCM-PP in 2012 along with becoming a certified pediatric coder through PAHCS that same year. In the fall of 2013, she was asked to serve on the National Advisory Board with PAHCOM, for which she humbly serves amongst PAHCOM’s best and brightest and promises to serve the PAHCOM membership in any way she can.

Sue has been married to her high school sweetheart, Dennis for 41 years and they have two grown daughters. Krystal is a special needs teacher in Selma, California and Sheridan works for Disneyland in Anaheim, California.