Healthcare expense management is no longer just an administrative task–it’s essential to keeping costs down, complying with regulations, and helping your healthcare staff focus on what they do best: patient care.
Healthcare organizations of all sizes face common challenges, from tracking continuing medical education (CME) expenses to managing travel reimbursements.
In this blog, we’ll explain the essential steps to streamlining healthcare expense management and showcase how automation tools like Fyle can be a game-changer for your organization.
What is Healthcare Expense Management?
At its core, healthcare expense management involves tracking, reporting, and analyzing the various costs tied to organizational functions, such as travel, training, and CME (continuing medical education).
It differs from general expense management because it requires strict regulatory compliance and carries unique risks, from fraud to over-budget CME trips.
Healthcare expenses typically include travel, meals, lodging, and fees related to professional training or conferences. Without a structured expense management process, costs can spiral quickly, affecting the organization’s bottom line.
Key Components of Healthcare Expense Management
- Tracking and Reporting: Detailed tracking of all expenses ensures clarity and accountability.
- Policy Enforcement and Compliance: Strict policies help prevent non-compliance and manage financial risk.
- Real-time Visibility: Maintaining visibility into expenses helps organizations make data-driven decisions.
- Employee Engagement: Making expense reporting for healthcare professionals allows them to focus on patient care, not paperwork.
How Automation Can Help Healthcare Expense Management
In the healthcare field, manually managing expenses can be costly, error-prone, and time-consuming. Automating healthcare expense management allows organizations to streamline operations, minimize compliance risks, and improve overall productivity.
Here’s how automation can make a significant impact:
Eliminate Paper (And the Chase)
Managing T&E expenses on paper is a hassle—think stapling, copying, scanning, and even chasing down staff for crumpled receipts after conferences.
The reality? Paper-based records are slow, prone to errors, and a drain on everyone’s time. The good news is that automation wipes out paper entirely.
With tools like Fyle, receipts can be snapped and uploaded instantly via text message, where Fyle’s AI creates, codes, and submits the expense.
Expense reports are routed for approvals and reimbursements with zero manual effort, giving everyone a break from the paperwork chaos.
Boosts Efficiency and Speeds Up Reimbursements
Automation drastically reduces the time required to approve and process reimbursements. Expenses flow into reports automatically from credit card transactions or mobile uploads, eliminating the need for manual entry and cutting down processing time by an impressive 32%.
Reduces Errors and Lowers Fraud Risks
Manual data entry, duplicate submissions, and lack of visibility are common errors in expense management. Automated systems enforce policies from the outset, guiding staff to make compliant spending decisions and flagging any potential issues in real-time.
Systems like Fyle can prevent non-compliant expense submissions by flagging policy violations during expense creation. This helps avoid accidental or intentional policy breaches and enhances overall compliance.
Healthcare organizations must comply with stringent regulatory requirements, from the Sunshine Act to the Anti-Kickback Statute. Automation ensures continuous compliance by monitoring each expense for regulatory adherence.
Improves Spend Visibility and Enables Better Decision-Making
Limited visibility into spending patterns can leave an organization vulnerable to budget overages and missed cost-saving opportunities. Automation provides real-time data and insights, giving finance teams full visibility into healthcare expenses.
Automated dashboards offer a consolidated view of expenses by category, department, or project, making it easy to spot trends, detect overspending, and stay within budget. With better insight into spending, organizations can take data-driven actions to optimize costs.
Pre-Approval Processes for Expense Control
Pre-approvals allow finance teams to monitor spending in advance, helping healthcare organizations better control budgets and reduce instances of non-compliant spending. This level of control is essential for adhering to tight budget constraints often faced in healthcare.
Improved Employee Experience
Manual expense processes can frustrate healthcare professionals who are already stretched for time. Automated expense management tools offer ease of use, eliminating repetitive manual tasks and allowing healthcare staff to focus on their primary roles.
Many automated solutions are mobile-friendly, enabling healthcare professionals to capture and submit expenses from anywhere. Clinicians can snap a picture of their receipts, submit them instantly, and avoid the hassle of managing paper records.
Tips to Streamline Healthcare Expense Management
Managing healthcare expenses isn't just about cutting costs–it’s about establishing a smooth, efficient, and compliant process. Here’s how:
1. Start with Smart Policies
A clear set of T&E policies is the foundation of effective expense management. Make these policies accessible, concise, and mobile-friendly so staff can check them anytime, anywhere. By setting specific guidelines around travel, meals, and CME expenses, your organization can easily prevent misuse and ensure compliance.
2. Train Staff on Proper T&E Practices
Provide comprehensive training on expense policies to help clinicians and staff stay focused on their core duties. A well-designed training program can cover the essentials of tracking CME spend, using expense tools, and understanding reimbursement timelines.
Keeping it engaging and practical ensures that everyone, from doctors to administrative staff, knows the do’s and don’ts of expense reporting.
3. Make Expense Management Mobile
Eliminate the hassle of lost receipts by using mobile expense management solutions that allow staff to snap and upload receipts directly. Mobile-friendly platforms mean clinicians can manage expenses on the go, keeping records organized without manual paperwork.
4. Move Away from Manual Processes
Manual entry of T&E expenses is not only tedious but also prone to mistakes. An automated system lets your team quickly log and approve expenses, saving time and reducing human error. This transition can save up to 32% of time spent on reimbursements and lower administrative strain, freeing up staff to focus on more impactful tasks.
5. Maintain Visibility for Better Control
Real-time data visibility is crucial. With the right tracking and reporting tools, healthcare organizations can gain a comprehensive view of all spending.
Fyle’s real-time credit card feeds, for instance, give you instant notifications on all business credit card transactions and categorize expenses in real-time, making it easier to monitor trends and stay within budget.
6. Require Pre-Approvals
Encourage staff to submit expense requests for pre-approval. This not only prevents inappropriate expenses but also gives managers a chance to flag out-of-policy spending early on. This way, healthcare organizations can better control budgets and reduce instances of non-compliance.
7. Leverage Data Analytics
Analytics tools help visualize expense data, providing insights into spend patterns by category, department, or project. This capability can highlight areas for cost-saving, such as identifying high-spend vendors or out-of-policy spending trends.
Data visibility is a powerful ally for CME expenses, where compliance with laws like the Anti-Kickback Statute is crucial.
How Fyle Can Help with Healthcare Expense Management
Fyle combines cutting-edge automation and real-time tracking features designed specifically for healthcare organizations. Here’s how it can help streamline your processes:
Real-Time Credit Card Feeds
Fyle directly integrates with credit card networks like Visa and Mastercard to give you real-time text notifications on all credit card spend. Healthcare staff can submit receipts via text, and Fyle matches these with credit card transactions in real time.
These instant notifications ensure every expense is accounted for without the back-and-forth over missing receipts.
Automated Compliance
Fyle’s system monitors expenses for compliance with built-in policy enforcement and duplicate detection. AI-powered fraud detection alerts managers of any suspicious activity, ensuring your organization stays compliant without manual oversight.
Real-Time Spend Visibility
Fyle’s spend dashboard enables a consolidated view of expenses by category, project, or department, making it easy to identify overspending risks. With actionable insights, organizations can budget more effectively and mitigate unexpected expenses.
Multi-Level Approval Workflows
Flexible approval workflows mean that Fyle can adapt to your organization's structure, from project-led to department-specific approvals. Staff can review and approve expenses via mobile, email, Slack, or Teams, ensuring the process is as convenient and efficient as possible.
Quick and Easy Integrations
Fyle seamlessly integrates with accounting tools like QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, and Xero.
It also seamlessly imports data such as employees, projects, categories, GL codes, departments, job codes, cost codes, taxes, and more while exporting expenses as bills, journal entries, or credit card charges in real-time. This automation significantly reduces accountants' time and manual work.
24/7 Customer Support
Healthcare organizations need reliable support. Fyle’s customer service team offers round-the-clock support with a 95% CSAT rating, ensuring users have the help they need anytime, whether during setup or daily use.
