How HealthTrust Treasury Solutions can streamline processes & save money
From collecting payments from patients to paying suppliers, healthcare systems are continually challenged with effectively managing cash flow and avoiding wasted time and money on things like fees and missed payments.
To help members stay on track, HealthTrust offers a comprehensive set of Treasury Solutions that can streamline processes and minimize fees, explains Kim Allen, HealthTrust’s Senior Director of Strategic Sourcing, Commercial Products.
Here are key examples of how these services can benefit HealthTrust members.
Money going out:
Credit: Through contracts with American Express and Sun Trust (administering Mastercard and Visa), HealthTrust members can obtain more flexible options for paying their bills. “Hospitals can increase the chances a supplier will accept a credit card for payment when they have more credit card options—such as American Express, Visa and MasterCard—to choose from,” Allen explains. HealthTrust members also receive a financial incentive payment based on spend with each credit card company.
ACH (Automated Clearing House) Transactions: Automating payments to suppliers by opting for ACH cuts the costs and fraud risks of generating and mailing paper checks. Members also receive financial incentive payments based on increasing the number of suppliers they engage in this program. “You can turn your AP Department into an additional income stream while mitigating the risk of fraud and streamlining processes,” Allen says.
Accounts Payable Recovery: An audit of a member’s AP spend by Moody’s captures events such as transactions that didn’t get credited correctly by suppliers, possibly resulting in recoveries for double billing (and double payment), missed rebates and missed product returns. Allen says Moody’s recovers those misspent dollars. “That’s basically found money for members,” she explains. There’s no out-of-pocket member expense, but Moody’s retains a percentage of what is recovered.
Money coming in:
Merchant Acquiring Services and Products: Through First Data, HealthTrust offers a single-source merchant acquiring solution for integrated receipt of payments by patients and others to the healthcare system, including point-of-sale solutions, e-Commerce, check/ACH solutions and much more. When receiving payments through credit or debit, for example, members benefit from HealthTrust’s negotiated lower rates on merchant processing fees.
Class Action Recovery Services: At any given time, hundreds of class-action lawsuits are in litigation across the U.S., involving products healthcare facilities routinely purchase—ranging from insurance policies to computer equipment. While many HealthTrust members are likely eligible to participate and to potentially win part of a settlement, they rarely do because the process is time-consuming. “We have a contract with Managed Care Advisory Group to file for class-action lawsuits on behalf of members, recover those dollars and get them back to health systems,” Allen says.
To make the most of HealthTrust’s Treasury Solutions, Allen recommends visiting the Indirect Spend section of the HealthTrust Member Portal to review specifics. “We’ll work with members individually to show the value of each of those solutions to their facility or IDN,” she adds. Contact Allen at kim.allen@healthtrustpg.com for more information.
Share Email Finance, Purchased Services, Q4 2019
