Solution Perspective: Supporting a Flexible Payments Workforce

Business Challenge

In the aftermath of the pandemic, it appears that remote work is here to stay. Half of employees across industries work in a hybrid remote/onsite mode, and “most remote-capable employees have been largely settled into their projected long-term work locations since mid-2022.”^[1] Nearly 44% of individuals in business and financial management occupations are working remotely, 21% fully remote and 23% hybrid^[2].

In healthcare, 15% of all hospital workers are remote (7% fully, 8% hybrid).^[3] Provider organizations have largely concluded that accommodating such work — especially in departments such as finance and revenue cycle management (RCM) — satisfies several critical current demands. This article examines the strategic imperatives driving remote work and describes how CommerceHealthcare^® payments solutions provide essential support for today’s flexible workforce.

Key Issues

Work from home or other non-office locations has become part of a strategic toolset to address four major healthcare workforce and operational challenges. First, organizations seek to meet rising employee demand for flexible work arrangements. National polls elicit high preferences for flexible options and indicate greater engagement, less burnout and reduced likelihood of quitting among those who can work from their desired location.^[4]

The second challenge is cost control. Despite post-pandemic industry improvement, healthcare organizations face elevated costs and the prospect for longer-term “protracted margin compression.”^[5] Leaders see opportunity for considerable savings through automating manual steps prevalent in payments processing. For example, 13% of healthcare accounts payable teams process over 2,000 payments per month, doubling the percentage of other industries, while 42% issue more than half of their payments by check.^[6] Nearly nine in ten organizations face intensified demand to upgrade their RCM systems, and 37% view RCM as their top IT investment over the coming two years to enhance automation.^[7], ^[8]

Third, workforce shortages continue to be a management issue. Fitch Ratings believes they are “structural” and a “long-term challenge.”^[9] A recent survey showed 55% of health systems are experiencing high or medium shortages for coders and 49% for business office roles.^[10] Finance executives say they now must maintain a “primary focus” on attracting and retaining talent.^[11] Offering remote work options helps these efforts.

Finally, well-managed remote work is key to sustaining the fast-growing use of outsourcing and “extended business office” models that rely on external resources to complement internal RCM staff.

The Core Need

Organizations require an infrastructure that supports productive and value-enhancing remote work in payments processing. Optimal solutions balance technology, people and process change.

The CommerceHealthcare^® Solution

CommerceHealthcare^® helps address today’s hybrid financial work environment with solutions that automate and streamline a variety of high-volume payments processes. Solutions bring exception-based workflows and paperless processing to three financial operations (Figure 1).

Supporting Remote Work in Payments



View PDF of Figure 1^[PDF]

Payables

Payment Hub provides centralized invoice automation that orchestrates an organization’s supplier payments. Remote and on-site staff access the same system to boost efficiency through:

• Multimodal payment support (credit card, EFT, check).
• Automation of scheduled and one-time payments.
• Consolidation of individual payables into a single file.
• Automatic reconciliation reporting.

A detailed spend file analysis identifies candidates to be enrolled in Payment Hub, followed by intensive CommerceHealthcare^® onboarding of vendors.

PreferPay^® targets another growing payables type: refunds to patients and insurers. When a provider’s financial system initiates a refund request, PreferPay^® gathers patient information and issues the refund through the recipient’s choice of direct deposit, direct to debit card, e-check or paper check. The system further aids remote staff productivity by returning accurate reconciliation data and auto-batching multiple payments and supporting documentation for insurance/commercial accounts.

Remittance Management

RemitConnect^® automates the entire posting and reconciliation process for insurance and patient receivables to reduce workloads, manual steps and complexity. Key productivity features include:

• Single-system management of all insurance remittance types including checks, paper EOBs, ERAs/EFTs.
• Bidirectional data integration with patient financial management systems.
• Software that automates disaggregation of remittances, posting each payment to the correct financial system, and reconciling the payments.
• Reporting and audit trails, allowing management to sustain productivity gains, track KPIs and identify analytics-based improvements.

Patient Financing

Health Services Financing (HSF^®) combines automation with lending programs to meet growing patient financing demand. HSF^® underpins remote work by extending automation across the processing cycle, from application to servicing, through:

• Electronic application and enrollment for contactless, paper-free transactions.
• Immediate, no-screening credit issuance. Sufficient credit lines are authorized without credit check for all patients needing assistance. The provider electronically receives full cash payment upfront. The workflow becomes streamlined, scalable and exception-based.
• Complete loan servicing.
• Strong security measures to mitigate transaction risk.

Benefits

Both individually and together, these solutions offer substantial workforce benefits:

• Empowerment of efficient remote work.
• Organizational agility to manage shortages and optimize staffing levels using an on-site/off-site mix.
• Ability to realize cost savings.
• Freeing staff time from routine processing to focus on more complex work.
• Customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

With remote work likely a permanent fixture, adopting these payments strategies and solutions represents an important step. It helps build the right infrastructure to manage flexible work effectively and enhance engagement with financial department employees.

CommerceHealthcare^® solutions are provided by Commerce Bank.

Disclosures: