2024 has been described as a financial ‘’make or break’’ year in healthcare. SpendMend Research Supervisor Zachary Markham explains to Jim Cagliostro why time and data are money for hospitals.
Episode Introduction
Zach explains why the lack of timely, accurate data can delay recovery of credits, and why most hospitals only have 50% visibility into their spend and accounts payable processes. He also shares why duplicate payments and credit on spend are the top two methods for recovery of costs, and highlights how uncovering dark data saved SpendMend clients $413 million in 2023.
Show Topics
Data analysis identifies duplicate payments
Timely data is vital to maximize cost savings
The significant cost savings potential hidden in dark data
3 challenges to gathering hospital data
Positivity and communication skills are essential in leadership
02:18 Data analysis identifies duplicate payments
Zach provided a ‘’birds eye view’’ of data analysis.
‘’So, when we initially get a client's data in, a hospital's data, we jump right on that data and we go ahead, we search account numbers and vendor contact information for each. So, if it's a larger healthcare system, we'll search for each entity within that healthcare system. We'll search for account numbers for all those, as well as the contact information for vendors. And then, for duplicate payments, that's a large revenue stream for us. So, that starts in the data scrub team. They scrub down the data and identify some good potential duplicate payments. And a duplicate payment is just an invoice that was paid twice for one reason or another. And once the data scrub team is done with that, they'll pass it off to us and we'll go into our client's imaging systems, where they store their invoices and we will pull those invoices and pass it back over to the data scrub team for validation. And I guess the third one here would be just various invoice pull requests for other departments, including the tax team, purchased services, as well as med device, just to name a few. And then, the last one I'll cover here just for the bird's eye view, PHIQ, which is protected health information. So, we've talked about data and it's extremely important to obviously protect our client's data, but it's equally, if not more important, to protect the patient's data as well.’’
05:24: Timely data is vital to maximize cost savings
Zach said hospitals sometimes don’t obtain credits for years if price discrepancies aren’t found quickly.
‘’I'll give you an example from my time as a pricing analyst. So, as a pricing analyst, we would review data price discrepancies that were about one to two years old from present from what they were currently paying, the hospitals were paying. So, we'd go through identify, "You're paying this vendor $20 for this item, when you should be paying $10 for that item," just as an example. And we would get that and working one to two years behind them. I guess the quicker that we would finish our review and then turn that back into the client, they'd be able to mend the price that they're paying, get it back to the contracted or agreed upon price. And also, collect the credits that were outstanding for the time that they were overpaying. So, I guess the sooner you can identify that you're paying at a higher rate than the contracted price for items, the sooner that you can correct it and get credits from the vendors.’’
07:44: The significant cost savings potential hidden in dark data
Zach said hospitals only have 50% visibility into their spend and accounts payable processes.
‘’Dark data is information that is hidden or not visible to a hospital for a variety of reasons. But it comes down to them not having the time, resources, or insights to uncover their own data blind spots. And I like to think of this kind of as a puzzle. So, when a hospital or healthcare system hands over their data to us, they're giving us basically a half put-together puzzle, and it's our job to put together the missing pieces or the other 50%. They only have approximately 50% visibility into their spend and accounts payables processes, and this dark data is essential to uncover, so our clients have a full set of data to make and implement decisions
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.