Connance Vendor Management Platform Extended To Hospitals? Professional Billing Activity

Waltham, MA – Connance, Inc., a leading provider of business office self-pay solutions, today announced the extension of its innovative vendor management solution, Agency Manager, to include Professional Billing, also known as Physician Billing.  Connance® Agency Manager, a web-based platform that monitors and administrates day-to-day vendor activity, provides better visibility and control to improve yields, streamlines operations and creates a better patient experience after treatment.  The addition of the Professional Billing Module enables providers to use a single platform for managing both hospital and physician outsourced collection processes.

Collecting revenue from hospital-owned physician practices is an increasingly important business office activity, as the reported percentage of physicians employed directly by hospitals increased from 25 percent in 2002 to 37 percent in 2008.  The expanding number of hospital-employed physicians is creating a significant business office challenge, as the physician billing and collection process is fundamentally different than that for hospital bills.  Physician billing operates under different timelines, policies and procedures relative to hospital billing.  For those operations that use outsourced solutions, physician bills tend to have their own vendor network and the growth in value of physician bills is effectively doubling their vendor management challenge. 

By extending the Connance Agency Manager platform to physician billing vendors, hospitals can gain the same benefits they currently realize on hospital bills including daily visibility to collection activity, automated reconciliation for inventory and invoices, streamlined communication and exception processing.  In a time of proliferating IT systems, combining vendor management for hospital and physician billing on the same platform also means that business office and IT teams have a single management system for all their outsourced processes.

Vendor management efforts that include Agency Manager are enabling clients to realize as much as 30 percent cash improvement not including reductions in IT maintenance expenses and general administrative costs.  The new physician module builds on this foundation.

“Over the years, hospitals have outsourced many activities in their business offices related to the collection of self-pay revenue and older or smaller managed care bills.  Agency Manager has shown itself to be a valuable management tool in the outsourcing process, delivering value for both providers and vendors,” Steve Levin, CEO of Connance.  “One of our early Agency Manager adopters realized that physician billing had grown into a significant business office challenge and was an area needing major improvement.  With their support and insight, we added Professional Billing to Agency Manager and the benefits have been significant and immediate.”

About Connance, Inc.
Connance addresses the cash flow issues facing the healthcare business office on a daily basis, particularly relating to self-pay.  Patient-responsible revenue, already one of the fastest growing and hardest to collect revenue in the business office, is becoming more complex with increased scrutiny regarding charity eligibility and patient treatment during collection.  Connance Scoring products optimize self-pay collection efforts by prioritizing, segmenting and focusing activities for improved cash collection.  Connance Agency Manager, a web-based platform, monitors and administrates day-to-day vendor activity, providing unmatched visibility and control over outsourced vendors.  Combining FICO’s world class technology and the experiences of leading healthcare networks, Connance’s products are bringing new ideas to hospital business offices.  Connance is headquartered in Waltham, MA.  For more information visit www.connance.com or call (781) 577-5000.