Hill-Rom will add 50 jobs in North Charleston

Hill-Rom Corp. wants to make sure the paperwork gets done.

The company’s North Charleston home-care division is adding 50 workers whose sole job will be to process reimbursement forms and other paperwork from third-party health insurers. Right now, that cumbersome, time-consuming task falls to Hill-Rom’s sales force, said spokesman Joel Reuter.

“Basically they’re going to help our sales producers focus on what they do best – sell,” Reuter said.

“The result is 50 jobs are coming to the Charleston operation,” he said. Hill-Rom plans to start recruiting for the positions immediately, Reuter said.

The company said it needs the workers to ensure that health-care insurers reimburse Hill-Rom. The company files many medical claims because it typically rents its therapeutic products – such as specialty hospital beds, stretchers and infant warmers – to patients who are recovering at home.

Also, Hill-Rom is creating the new group to meet the demands of a changing health care market, Reuter said. As more aging baby boomers require Hill-Rom products, Reuter said, the volume of insurance-related paperwork that will come the company’s way almost certainly will grow.

“Home care is a very viable way of addressing the needs of the elderly,” he said.

The new group would field paperwork from “the whole gamut” of medical insurers, from the government-backed Medicare program to health-maintenance organizations and other private carriers, Reuter said.

Hill-Rom eliminated about 100 local jobs last year as part of a restructuring. One of the key reasons for the cuts was reduced government reimbursement levels, the company said in January 2001.

Hill-Rom is a division of Batesville, Ind.-based Hillenbrand Industries Inc. The company employs about 275 workers in North Charleston, Reuter said.