The Healthcare Hub
Helping the Healthcare Industry Cross the ePayables Technology Chasm
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Matt Houston, Vice President
Efficient payment processes benefit both providers and suppliers – leveling the playing field and helping to create more productive relationships among all trading partners. However, electronic payments, the most efficient payment method, remains an elusive piece of the payment puzzle.
Data shows electronic payments are close to replacing paper checks as the number one method of payment for most businesses. The appeal of electronic payments is obvious: they lower the cost of doing business by saving time, reducing transaction costs, and speeding payment cycles.
Despite these tangible benefits, healthcare has fallen behind other industries in adopting electronic payments, still relying too heavily on check and credit card payments.
An independent report sponsored by GHX found the majority of large healthcare suppliers distribute 20% or more of their invoices by paper. What’s more, 76% of these companies receive fewer than half of all payments electronically. Data shows it also costs as much as $31 to manually process each invoice and cut paper checks. That doesn’t account for the labor costs associated with the manual process, as well as the higher rate of errors.
Not only is this continued reliance on manual processes untenable, it doesn’t support the healthcare’s industry quest to strip waste and inefficiency out of the system – lowering overall costs while ensuring the ongoing delivery of outstanding patient care.
The good news is, advancements in epayable technology offer suppliers and providers a cost-effective means to improve the efficiency of today’s highly manual payment process. The GHX epayable solution offers end-to-end provider procure-to-pay and supplier order-to-cash solutions that improve the invoice and payment process across the entire healthcare trading community, helping to drive measurable cost savings and operational efficiency through the more than 85% of US hospitals that are able to connect, interact and transact with thousands of suppliers in a way that optimizes each payment.
GHX is committed to continuing to be at the forefront of providing cloud-based epayables technology that supports the shared desires of trading partners for collaborative solutions that improve both revenue cycles and customer relationships.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing more Healthcare Hub perspective pieces that delve deeper into healthcare payables issues and why GHX believes healthcare is ready to cross the epayables chasm and adopt smart technology advances that optimize payments processing for all parties.