It’s the time of the year when being scared is encouraged. Everywhere you look spiders, skeletons, and monsters are lurking… even in your finances, pharmacy, and OR. There is no reason to be part of the 51%* of surveyed healthcare executives who view a recovery audit as daunting and/or scary. The Financial Leakage monster that roams in your finances can be tamed.
The biggest concerns we hear when deciding whether or not to begin a recovery audit process, are that the process is time-consuming and they wonder if it will be valuable. A recovery project can check all these boxes if it is a full-service company matching your needs.
Overwhelmingly we hear that departments are being downsized due to budget cuts, more tasks are placed on small teams, and most people spend two hours a day on tasks outside their daily tasks*. The last thing anyone wants to do is add another task to their pile of things to do. A full-service recovery audit should not take much time.
- There should be an initial setup that takes 1-2 hours
- A download from the ERP system
- 15-30 minutes status updates every other week
- A final presentation of about an hour.
- The total time commitment is less time than you spend during one week on outside tasks.
- What do I get out of this project? No matter which portion of a recovery project you choose- whether traditional, sales and use tax, pharmacy, medical device warranty, or any other aspect the project must show you a concrete value. The value you should be receiving is visibility into your system, control gaps and areas of Financial Leakage should be pointed out, and you should learn where you are succeeding. Let’s use the example of returns to discuss the benefit of a recovery project. First, you should have the ability to see your project in real-time through a portal. Throughout the experience, a manager should meet with your team and tell you they are noticing that they are finding a higher than the normal amount found in refunds.You change the refund module and now you are saving money and getting closer to reaching your Corporate Saving Goal.
You can then check on your returns by using a model that runs closer to the current date, so you never fall into the Financial Leakage Monster’s clutches again.
You immediately see value in the portal, you can see control gaps and fix them, so you don’t lose any more money receiving financial value.
If you choose to begin a recovery project don’t be scared or intimidated, do your homework and find the company that best fits your needs. Search for a company that can provide you with options to work from past to current and then continues to stay current. Find someone that has a portal for your team to have access to your project whenever your team has a moment to look at it. The final thing you should look for is a company that provides full visibility into your whole health system as well as analytics for you to take a deep dive into with your team. The check at the end of a recovery project is always nice to have, but making sure your system is efficiently operating is the real value.
*all statistics come from a 2018 SpendMend Survey
Interested in reading more SpendMend blogs? Click here.