Healthcare delivery is accompanied by a series of complicated financial transactions between the patient, provider, and insurance companies. Currently, most of these transactions are done manually, involving extensive labor hours conducting phone calls, and mailing and faxing documents. In particular, claim attachments, which providers use to give additional information required for certain claims, take up a significant amount of additional time. In total, these tasks are estimated to take up to 1.1 million unnecessary labor hours (Lagasse).
However, this does not have to be the case. New findings show that switching over to electronic transactions through a financial information system could potentially save $9 billion through an average savings of $6 per claim (Lagasse). Evolving industry standards and advances in technology have likely contributed to greater adoption, but many processes remain to be performed manually. Dental providers could potentially see even more benefits, as they tend to adopt electronic systems at a 30% lower rate than medical providers (Lagasse). Ultimately, healthcare payments are relevant to most people and should be performed in an efficient manner. Adoption of financial information systems would show significant cost savings in the healthcare delivery industry.
Source: http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/electronic-business-transactions-switchover-could-save-healthcare-9-billion-report-says