Like physicians’ offices, it’s a challenge for hospitals to bill and collect funds, and to pay their costs.
Now, with new regulations, including the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it’s become even more important to get it right. Billing errors can cost practices thousands of dollars every day, according to Kathy McCoy, MBA. The same goes for paying bills.
Now Brainware and Ascend Software have announced that Rotech Healthcare, an Orlando, Fla.-based provider of medical equipment and services, and Crouse Hospital, a healthcare provider based in Syracuse, NY, have chosen them to automate their accounts payable systems.
The combined solution, according to the source, will allow hospital accounts payable staff to sort and extract header and line item invoice data, then route it for approval, integrate the data with legacy content management platforms and retrieve a quick, simplified document retrieval on the back end.
“Recognizing that accounts payable demands are high, Crouse Hospital’s finance team was motivated in finding a proven paperless solution to organize our AP department to meet today’s challenges,” said Deborah Montrond, Crouse accounts payable manager. “We needed to implement workflow automation to improve efficiency, reduce invoice processing time and assist with month-end accruals.”
Other companies are finding that digitizing accounts payable is the number-one way to bring costs down. “Through integration of digital mailroom, intelligent capture, electronic workflow, and digital repository technologies, we’ve been able to cut the cost of processing AP documents from $25 per invoice to less than $5 per invoice,” Greg Bartels, president and CEO of IPS, told Ken Congdon, editor-in-chief of healthcare technology online.
Lucy R. Carter, CPA, and Sara S. Lankford, CPA, agree that managing accounts payable successfully is crucial to managing cash flow and protecting the assets of the organization.
“In a time of increasingly thin operating margins, it is essential to have proactive strategies in place to manage the money flowing out of the medical practice to pay its bills for goods and services,” they said.
Edited by
Braden Becker
