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    Naval Hospital Bremerton’s deputy comptroller is Navy Medicine Accountant of the Year

    Naval Hospital Bremerton’s deputy comptroller is Navy Medicine Accountant of the Year

    Photo By Douglas Stutz | Lt. Matthew Ozanich, assigned to Naval Hospital Bremerton, recognized as CY 2014 BUMED...... read more read more

    BREMERTON, Wash. - The work of a Navy Medicine comptroller impacts the entire command as they administer the myriad acquisitions, logistics, and manpower issues throughout the fiscal year.

    A little innovative thinking can help to assist in the overlapping process of such budgetary management, and Naval Hospital Bremerton’s (NHB) deputy comptroller can readily cite an example.

    “A project that I implemented when I first came aboard at NHB was the monitoring and right-sizing of contract execution. At NHB, we track anywhere from 150 to 200 contracts for goods and services on any given fiscal year. This is everything from lab reagents to contracted Labor and Delivery nurses. The risk in renewing or creating a new contract is that we must set aside command funds for the life of the contract - no more than one year - because our funds expire every year until we receive new allotments every October. The problem was that several contracts were being over or under funded on the front end and no one would realize we had overshot or undershot a contract until the contract expired,” said Lt. Matthew Ozanich.

    According to Ozanich, there was a lab services contract to start Oct. 1, 2015 with the contract expiring on Sept. 30, 2016. The command’s Resource Management Directorate had to estimate how many funds had to be allotted for that specific contract. The awareness for Ozanich was that they could set aside a certain amount but then only get billed for half of the lab services for the year. If such was the case, the funds that went unused would also expire at the end of the year instead of being shifted elsewhere to cover other needs during that time. The goal in any such scenario is to ensure that does not happen.

    “What we developed over the last couple of years is a system to track and monitor all of our active contracts for any given fiscal year. If a contract is underperforming, we touch base with the department that uses that contract and see if we can reduce the contract award to be redistributed to other needed areas,” explained Ozanich, a Medical Service Corps officer from San Antonio, Texas.

    For his work on this and other duties in his position, Ozanich was recently recognized as Accountant of the Year ‘for outstanding achievements in accounting operations, standard operating procedures sustainment and financial statement audit readiness.’

    The accolades are nice, but Ozanich attests that he did not expect to see his name listed amongst the Calendar Year 2014 Department of the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) Financial Management Award winner.

    “It was a complete shock to me. I feel humbled and honored to have been chosen and it definitely wouldn’t have been a possibility without help from several individuals. But in all honesty, I did do a few fist pumps when I found out,” said Ozanich, who graduated from Sandra Day O’Connor High School in 2005.

    Ozanich grew up in San Antonio and completed his Bachelors and Masters in Health Administration at Texas State University. He gravitated towards the Navy soon after.

    “My father was retired Army and almost every healthcare experience I had ever had was at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. Choosing it as a career possibility was always in the back of my mind going through college. Entering grad school, I started communicating with recruiters and discovered that Navy Medicine was by far and away the best career choice for me. It has also given me the opportunity to serve my country and give back to the military health system,” said Ozanich, adding that being in the Resource Management field has been a very rewarding experience in his career that has taken him from Newport R. I. to Washington D.C. to his current assignment at NHB.

    The fact that he grew up within the military health system provided insight to start his own military career.

    “I was (also) fortunate enough to have the opportunity to specialize in Resource Management as a health care administrator coming right out of officer development school,” Ozanich said.

    Ozanich insists that the best part about his Navy Medicine career has been watching programs, policies, and practices he has had a hand in developing have a meaningful impact on the command and BUMED.

    When asked how important it is to be the command’s comptroller, Ozanich cites the quote “No margin. No mission,” from Sister Irene Krause, the former chairman of Baptist/St. Vincent's Health System in Jacksonville and one-time head of one of the nation’s largest Catholic health systems who passed away in 1998 at age 74. She strongly believed that strong fiscal management is what modern hospitals need to fulfill their mission.

    Aside from keeping the books balanced and ensuring that there is proper funding to make the command mission, Ozanich also helps determine that all the command’s fiscal responsibility are in accordance with appropriation laws and policies.

    “I don’t think a lot of people grasp just how many different rules and regulations are in place guarding the tax payer’s dollars. It makes our job difficult at times because we are usually the bad guys telling everyone ‘no, we can’t do that.’ Also, Department of Defense is undergoing an external financial audit in a couple of years. It has been a very challenging process to become audit ready. We are in the middle of that journey right now and it will ultimately be the responsibility of the Comptroller to ensure that the command will pass the audit when it comes,” Ozanich said, noting that the most gratifying aspect of his job is the people that he works with every day.

    “It has been a surprising, rewarding, and challenging journey so far,” stated Ozanich, when asked to sum up his Navy Medicine experience in one sentence.

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    NEWS INFO

    Date Taken: 07.15.2015
    Date Posted: 07.15.2015 16:41
    Story ID: 170128
    Location: BREMERTON, WA, US

    Web Views: 182
    Downloads: 0

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