Written By: Nicole Thompson, Director of Business Development, nthompson@spendmend.com
When I started in the recovery audit industry as an intern at an industry leader, I was shuttling disks and drives to the data processor’s office and picking up bankers boxes of printed client reports. Pulling invoices meant rolled up sleeves and long lists of invoices, a few days at Iron Mountain and hours on end at the copy machine. As I began calling vendors to follow up on questions about statements, I had to look up contact information on a CD-Rom or call 411. Duplicates were the result of faxed invoices, returns, etc. After interning I was hired on as an Account Executive. My next role challenged me to build a business development team. From there, I built yet another team and led the implementation of not one, but two CRMs. Now, I’m privileged to be working with simply the best team in the Healthcare Recovery Audit Industry.
CHANGE
Companies were changing. They were moving from legacy homegrown systems and paper invoices to first generation ERP systems like JDEdwards and imaging systems that promised freedom from file cabinets.
Organizations with people entering invoices at locations across the nation and around the world created regional or global AP shared service centers, gravitating toward the goals of cost savings, best practices and oversight.
There goes the recovery audit industry. Not so fast.
Inaccurate information on any of the many touch points of the procure-to-pay cycle, typos, returns, credits not forwarded to AP, new staff training and turnover were just some of the causes of overpayments found by post-payment auditors.
COMPLEXITY
As organizations became more complex, so did ERP systems and their resulting implementations. A once simple 6 month implementation was now a 5-year global rollout with all other projects on hold. With all hands on deck, day-to-day tasks like researching invoices that didn’t match the PO often didn’t get staffs’ full time and attention. Returns? Fugaddaboudit.
Offshoring and outsourcing were the buzzwords of the time, again, keeping everyone busy with change management, training, and conversion. These shared services centers promised to audit their own work.
What could possibly go wrong?
These system changes meant invoices paid in multiple systems, new and inexperienced staff, inadequate training and controls meant the promise of 100% accuracy went out the window.
COMPLIANCE
SOX, data privacy and an ever-growing list of government regulations meant even more issues managing and complying with multiple reporting and governance requirements, all while maintaining or even reducing headcount.
Digital information coming into and leaving organizations reduced paper and manual processes, but “information at your fingertips” was falling far short of the promises made when data in distinct systems had no way of talking to each other. Creating order out of chaos became a pipe dream.
20+ years later, a few (ahem) gray hairs, teams built and countless clients later (no correlation), procure-to-pay, supply chain, sourcing – we all look very different on the outside – but on the inside, change, complexity and compliance are the only constants. Supply chain, purchasing and accounts payable professionals manage all of this with ease. It’s their normal.
As Mary Poppins said so well, more than 99% of what they do is “practically perfect in every way.” But when you’re dealing with millions and billions in spend, that small percentage of errors can really add up. For public companies, those dollars can go back to the bottom line. For privately held organizations, you can reinvest into growth. For healthcare organizations, that means funding even better patient care.
Am I glad the days of pulling invoices at Iron Mountain are over? YES!
But the days of helping companies recover overpayments continue. As long as change, complexity and compliance are part of business, recovery auditing will be as well.
ILLUMINATION
So where do I see recovery auditing progressing? The devil is in the details, and you have to dig into the details to find the real root cause of every single overpayment.
What happened? Why? How do you fix it?
Only by shining a light on your dark data can you achieve true visibility and uncover the answers to these questions. And only by implementing the recommendations offered by the experts performing your audit, can you optimize your processes, controls and ultimately your department. You’ll be able to actually prevent those errors from happening in the future.
Change, complexity and compliance ensure that this illumination loop is infinite. We’ll be learning and growing and improving together for years to come.