Healthcare organizations are still seeing an unprecedented shortage of providers and frontline staff, forcing them to resort to hiring traveling staff and contractors—which come at a high cost. In addition to grappling with the labor shortage, leaders in Tribal healthcare must continue to navigate COVID-19 relief funding and sources, lease accounting, and growth and expansion. This episode, REDW National Tribal Practice Leader Wes Benally discusses key issues affecting Tribal healthcare with Principal Chris Tyhurst.
REDW LLC is proud to bring you the Insight in Indian Country Podcast, covering important advisory, accounting, and finance topics that impact Tribal Nations and business affairs. Thanks for listening!
Meet Your Hosts:
Wesley Ryan Benally, CPA
Principal and National Tribal Practice Leader
As the leader of REDW’s National Tribal Practice, Wes is committed to improving financial literacy throughout Indian Country. He oversees audits of a wide range for Native American communities, state and local government agencies, and non-profits, nationwide and is a member of the Arizona State Board of Accountancy’s Peer Review Oversight Advisory Committee and serves as an instructor with Arizona State University’s American Indian Policy Institute.
Christopher Tyhurst, CPA
Principal, Audit & Assurance
Chris has been in public accounting since 1994 and has extensive experience auditing Native American tribes and their enterprises, including hospitals and health centers. He has also provided many other financial and strategic consulting services to tribes, including internal controls, enterprise board training, financial forecasts, and staff training on accounting and federal grant management topics.
Compensation Studies—Your Key to Hiring & Retaining Top Talent.
It’s important to attract—and retain—the best employees to ensure the long-term success and sustainability of your tribal organization. And given an exceptionally competitive labor market and the usual budget constraints, this means basing your employee compensation and benefits programs on relevant and reliable data.
More from Insight in Indian Country
- Soaring Bird Solutions & the Road to the TL&M Conference with Karla BylundKarla Bylund, founder of Soaring Bird Solutions, joins Wes Benally to share her journey from a one-woman Tribal HR practice to REDW’s broader advisory platform — and what’s ahead at this year’s Tribal Leadership & Management Conference in Las Vegas.
- “No is a complete sentence.” | Breaking the Need to Explain YourselfA REDW HR Consulting duo brings their standing-room-only WEWIN National Conference session to the podcast — practical tools for confidence, boundaries, and voice in Indigenous women’s leadership.
- “Tribal Finance Is Much More Than Just Budgeting.” Inside OSU’s Tribal Finance & Accounting Certificate with Lindsey RayWhat does it take to truly prepare a professional to work in Tribal finance and governance? For Lindsey Ray, Senior Tribal Programs Manager at Oklahoma State University, the answer started with a needs assessment, a gap in the market, and a partnership that grew into something much bigger than anyone expected.
- “We’re all fighting for our people.” Economic Growth, Diversification, and the Future of Indian Country with Chris JamesChris speaks candidly about the role gaming has played as a transformational economic driver — and why Tribes are increasingly looking beyond it to federal contracting, technology, agriculture, tourism, and citizen entrepreneurship.
- “We’ve got to generate revenue for the nation.” How DDC Is Winning in Federal IT for the Navajo Nation with Austin TsosieWhat does it look like when a Tribally-owned enterprise deliberately goes off the reservation to generate economic returns for its Nation? Austin Tsosie, CEO of Diné Development Corporation (DDC) — the Navajo Nation’s 8A federal contracting arm — joins host Wes Benally to answer exactly that.
