CPUP Physician Payroll Integration Accomplished

May 26, 2005 :: Shirley Ross, Information Systems & Computing

The Clinical Practices of the University of Pennsylvania (CPUP) Physician Payroll Integration Team successfully migrated the ADP (vendor)-administered CPUP physician payroll into the University’s payroll application, an achievement that had eluded three previous efforts for startup, and they produced an end-product that had no observations for improvement cited during the Office of Audit, Compliance, and Privacy post-implementation review, a Penn first that is comparable in quality to a round of golf by Tiger Woods. 

This complex team, with representatives from many diverse areas of Penn, CPUP, and HUP(*), put aside differences and pledged to work together effectively to achieve the goal of integrating two separate payroll systems -- the University system, which paid for faculty and research work, and the CPUP Payroll system, which paid for clinical work.  Although separate systems for administrative purposes, both systems worked under the same federal tax identification number and this required precise coordination to ensure Social Security contributions and federally-mandated retirement limits were accurately maintained for the approximately 1,600 CPUP physicians who are also University faculty.  A complex CPUP compensation and benefits package added to the difficulty of administration, which was accomplished manually prior to the integration project.  Consequently, a high risk of costly mistakes and regulatory non-compliance existed.

With the team’s crucial agreement for collaboration as its cornerstone, members were able to clearly define roles and responsibilities, and then religiously follow a well-designed methodology and flawlessly implement amazingly detailed plans which enabled achievement of the humanly impossible:  a perfect end-product that protects the University from non-compliance issues while increasing administrative productivity and that also provides individual clients with a highly convenient payroll system.

(*)The team was comprised of the University’s Information Systems and Computing, Finance, Payroll, and Human Resources departments, the Comptroller’s Office, and multiple departments of the Medical School; the Clinical Practices of Penn’s CPUP Finance, Payroll, and Human Resources departments; and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania’s Finance, Payroll, and Human Resources departments.