Linda McCandless

Linda McCandless, a Senior Consultant with Coker’s Practice Management division, has more than twnety years of experience in healthcare management.  At Coker, she assists clients with operational issues, practice management, financial analyses, start-ups, operational assessments, and strategic planning.

Before joining Coker, Ms. McCandless worked in a variety of management and directorial roles in healthcare.  She held the senior administrative responsibility for a multi-faceted health system, coordinating the development of a cancer center and an ambulatory surgery center and managing several medical practices.  Her experience also encompasses conducting feasibility studies and handling the center’s budgeting.

Other experience includes serving as a Management Engineer with a hospital.  In that role, she conducted patient and staff satisfaction studies, developed data collection and reported for patient-focused care work redesign and clinical pathways projects, and coordinated and analyzed studies for cost accounting system implementations.

Ms. McCandless’ acumen for financial analysis helped her turn around health system-owned physician practices that were losing over $1 million annually by privatizing a practice; renegotiating physician contracts; evaluating staffing levels; eliminating excessive overhead; developing and implementing policies and procedures, and streamlining processes.

She has used her operational assessment skills to help practices improve cash flow and increase income through redesigning select positions; implementing new billing procedures; assessing appointment schedules; and improving record maintenance. As health system, physician, and community needs have changed, Ms. McCandless has also assisted with the establishment and reorganization of physician practices to private ownership.

Her previous experience also includes helping practices with identifying the need to upgrade or replace existing practice management systems, and in comparing the cost of various server options, support costs, software capabilities and equipment needs to select and implement new billing software.  She is also adept at making policy and procedural changes to achieve improvement in collections.

Ms. McCandless holds a Bachelors of Science (BS) in Industrial Management from Gannon University and a Masters of Health Services Administration (MHA) from the University of Kansas.  She is a member of the Medical Group Management Association and the American College of Medical Practice Executives, where she is a Certified Medical Practice Executive (CMPE).