Accounts receivable management is complicated for most businesses but it’s especially complex for organizations in the medical and healthcare industry. First, they must ensure that confidential patient information is secured in accordance with HIPA laws. Second, the process must account for multiple parties paying on a single bill as a portion of the invoice will be covered by the patient and the balance by one or more third party insurance coverage and/or a portion by Medicare or Medicaid.
The result of these complexities is a much higher days sales outstanding or DSO for healthcare and medical companies compare to other industry segments. This means that your organization needs to do everything you can to collect cash as fast as possible because you know that relying on insurance and the government agencies is out of your control.
This is why so many healthcare and medical companies utilize accounts receivable automation software for electronic invoice presentment and payment with secured, HIPAA-compliant features, automated statements, online patient bill pay portals, and a full-featured rules engine to help them identify who to call next and why so they can prioritize cash collection efforts.
Most companies implementing accounts receivable automation applications can expect to get paid at least 10% faster with an average improvement of about 20%. This frees up a significant amount of working capital, reduces risk, minimizes disputes, and streamlines the overall process making it much easier to manage.
There are many great options available on the market for accounts receivable automation including a few credit and collection systems specialized for the healthcare and medical bill collection industry. These are typically older applications – designed specifically for the industry requirements but with many gaps in features and technologies.
Another class of products on the market include collections applications designed for third party collection agencies. These have a lot of great features but often do not support collections from multiple parties nor do most support HIPAA compliance and other industry requirements.
There is also software designed to automate first party receivables collections in a business to business or B2B environment. Some of these products, like Anytime Collect, support HIPA compliance and can be easily adapted to meet other unique needs for healthcare and medical collections. Another key benefit to selecting B2B invoice collections applications is that they tend to integrate to popular accounting applications like Sage Intacct and other Sage products, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, and specialized healthcare and medical applications – something that many medical and healthcare applications don’t typically do well.
A good list of potential accounts receivable automation applications can be found on the extensive Capterra or G2Crowd websites which offer details and end-user product ranking and reviews. Capterra has a lot more products in this category while G2Crowd is still building out a library of products that fit this new and growing software category.Learn More Here.
