Business Goal: Integrate affiliated entities quickly and efficiently
Hospitals increase their points-of-entry in their service areas by acquiring or otherwise affiliating with physician groups, outpatient facilities, and allied health organizations. Hospitals usually provide centralized back-office services to these affiliated entities.
The benefit of a centralized back-office is reduced if it takes-on too many low-value tasks such as collecting old, low-balance patient accounts for new affiliates. Hospitals often don’t have the manpower to handle such low-value tasks made more difficult if affiliates’ billing systems aren’t integrated with the central information system.
When C & E buys affiliates’ patient bad debt, both time and money become available to fold affiliates’ back-office functions into the centralized back-office.
The hospital also experiences best-practices for handling late-stage, low-balance patient accounts. Executives can then confidently evaluate larger, hospital-level transactions and their impact on the hospital’s bottom line going forward.
