Health care financial expert lays out a stark reform reality: "People are just overwhelmed"

Meg Guy is a health care financial expert and CPA with the firm Easley, Endres, Parkhill & Brackendorff, P.C. Guy recently attended the Healthcare Financial Management Association's (HFMA) conference in Las Vegas, where she was one of only 10 Houstonians out of 4,500 attendees. She spoke with CultureMap about everything from what she took from the conference to what we can all expect from the national health care overhaul to her favorite doctor drama.

CultureMap: You work with a lot of health care businesses. Among your clients, what's the feeling?

Meg Guy: Overall the people are just overwhelmed. There's a lot of information, especially from a regulatory side that is basically to be determined. They're coming out with mandates daily as well as tax information. And then also from an individual side, people need access to healthcare. They've got to kind of navigate that whole system and figure out where they fit in and when do they get covered?

CM: Of the pressures that are likely to be faced by health care businesses, which do you think will most affect Houston, and Texas?

MG: There're really two parts to that. Health care reform is going to affect everyone — it's going to affect patients and providers, individuals and businesses. It's one of a few areas of our economy that really affects everyone.

Specifically in Texas and Houston, we have a very large uninsured population. That's going to affect Texas and Houston in particular because our state's budget is going to be burdened. All these people who were previously underserved or not served are now going to get put into the health care system.

CM: Do you think Houston will have a slightly easier time than the rest of the nation, as we seem to have in the recession?

MG: I don't think that at all, I think Houston is going to be very affected by it. We've been somewhat sheltered from the recession but our hospitals are going through the same challenges that other parts of the country are. Health care reform is going to definitely hit us hard and we really need to prepare for it.

It was interesting to get everything from (conference speaker and Senator) Bill Frist's perspective. I think a lot of people were sitting there waiting to hear, "sit back because it's going to be repealed." And the one thing I brought away was don't sit back and think this is going to be repealed because it's not. The big thing is innovate, innovate, innovate. That's what needs to happen in the industry.

CM: Do you have any advice for people just entering the industry?

MG: You know Frist is a heart and lung transplant surgeon. He comes from a family of physicians. He just had a son graduate from Columbia and he said he told his son not to go into medicine. However, what I would say is that I think physicians that are already in the throes of it that are frustrated, they just want to focus on practicing medicine and focus on the patient.

They don't want to be bothered with the business of health care but it's such a complex, regulated, jumbled system that administratively is very frustrating to the scientist.

I would say it's a great opportunity now because there is such a shortage. You're going to be in high demand and have an opportunity to really make a difference. Even a Republican, Bill Frist, said this really is good. Even though it was hard and he never thought it could have been passed, it really is good, and we've got to get good at it.

CM: And now for the token silly question — what's your favorite medical show, past or present?

MG: Grey's Anatomy — I like Izzie.