Insurance

"Physician heal thyself" is a piece of advice that is often quoted at physicians and other healthcare practitioners in order to remind them of the necessity of ensuring that they also take care of themselves, as opposed to solely devoting themselves to their clinical caseload and the needs of their patients.

That piece of advice, although commonly issued in an attempt to healthcare staff from the perils of "burnout" and becoming too attached in an emotionally sense to their patients has also been issued in regards to the financial and logistical aspect of being a healthcare provider. This is especially true in privatised healthcare systems such as in the US whereby a patient will be required to pay for their treatment.

Usually, the healthcare practitioner will not receive the money owed in cash, but instead will be paid for the services rendered by means of the healthcare insurance coverage of the patient. Unfortunately, health insurance companies are notoriously sedentary when it comes to the settlement of the accounts owed, and so it is not uncommon for a healthcare practitioner to be forced to wait up to 4 months before receiving any sort of payment at all.

This poses a myriad of logistical problems and difficulties for the healthcare practitioner because it means that they will suffer an unpredictable, unstable and limited amount of cash flow. From a business perspective, this makes them exceptionally vulnerable as they will have to effectively cannibalize the working capital reserves of their medical office simply to cover their current debts.

Thankfully, there is a solution at hand which can fend off the dreaded Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, and this takes the guise of accounts receivable funding. With accounts receivable funding, the client company will (the medical office of the healthcare practitioner) in effect sell the insurance invoice accounts owed by their patients.

Rather than having to wait the several months that it will take for the insurance company to finally release the funds actually owed, a company that provides accounts receivable funding services will then be in a position to actually provide the medical office with funds much more quickly. Indeed, one of the great benefits for healthcare practitioners who use accounts receivable funding is that they can receive a sizeable amount of capital in the space of a few days.

This in turn directly tackles and remedies what is one of the most prolific and contentious problems faced by healthcare practitioners: limited cash flow which in turn compromises the potential survivability of their business entity as a whole.

Healthcare providers have commonly complained that they are medical providers first, and businesspeople second and so having to struggle with the administrative tedium of chasing up unpaid invoices and accounts makes it much more difficult for them to devote the appropriate level of time and care for their patients.

Therein lies another major plus for using this form of business financing: the agency responsible for the funding will assume total control for the collection process which in turn, frees up the healthcare provider.