When Gena Wingfield went to the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, she wasn’t sure what career she wanted to pursue.
She had considered going into the medical field, but her chemistry class in high school didn’t go so well, she said.
“Accounting just came easy for me, so that’s kind of the path I chose,” said the Hot Springs native who grew up in Glenwood. “It was interesting too.”
After graduating from UCA in 1983 with a degree in accounting, Wingfield went to work for the national accounting firm Arthur Young, which is now known as Ernst & Young. “I went into public accounting and really enjoyed it,” she said. But she didn’t like all the traveling that went along with it.
When she learned of an opening at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, it piqued her interest. “I thought, well, this would be a great opportunity to actually use my finance degree but in the medical field,” Wingfield said. “So it kind of seemed like a win-win situation for me.”
She started in 1985 at the state’s only pediatric hospital as a staff accountant and held several positions in the finance area, including chief information officer. She became chief financial officer in 1998.
One of her proudest accomplishments came at the end of 2008, when the country was in the middle of the Great Recession. ACH was about to start its $121 million South Wing project that would add 258,000 SF to the hospital. The project had broken ground in the fall of 2008, and ACH was scheduled to move forward with a bond issue in November.
“Because of the interest rate environment at that time, we couldn’t issue bonds,” Wingfield said. “It was a really, really tricky time.” She said discussions included cutting back on the project or searching for other ways to finance it.
ACH tapped its savings to continue the project several months until a decision could be made. Then in May 2009, ACH was able to issue its bonds. “We actually ended up [where] we could have sold three times the amount of the bonds that we were trying to sell.”
The South Wing project opened in 2012.
One of the challenges she faces as CFO is dealing with Medicaid reimbursements. More than 60 percent of ACH patients are covered by Medicaid, which is funded by the state and federal governments. And the Medicaid funding can be trimmed if the state or federal government suffers from budget issues. “We’re never quite certain how that funding is going to go,” she said.
Since the Medicaid funding issue is out of ACH’s hands, Wingfield said, ACH focuses on controlling costs and being prudent with its money. For the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2014, ACH reported $476.8 million in net patient revenue and $46.7 million in net income.
As CFO, Wingfield oversees about 150 of the more than 4,400 employees at ACH. “I hope that I really instill in my folks just the drive for excellence.”
She added that the finance department strives to be as accurate as possible. “People count on us to have a lot of credibility and to be accurate in our numbers,” she said.
Outside of the hospital, Wingfield is involved with Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock. In 2014, she was on the finance committee of the Women’s Foundation of Arkansas, which focuses on women and girls in Arkansas, but had to leave because its meetings and ACH’s conflicted with each other.
Wingfield is glad that she’s been at ACH for the past 30 years because it’s not the same routine each day. “That’s why I’ve enjoyed being CFO here: It is a constant learning,” she said. “I enjoy that about my job. My kids would say that I’m very nosy, but I would say I’m very curious.”
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