A regional medical billing company with 25 years of experience in the industry was struggling to keep up with the downward price pressure that was impacting their business. They knew that they had to adapt quickly to be able to stay in business as their margin was being cut year after year.
Challenge
After decades of profitable growth, our client was in unchartered territory. They still provided industry-leading expertise and service; however, their internal cost structure could no longer be supported based on the dramatic pricing decreases that became necessary to be competitive in the marketplace. The competition was leveraging offshore capabilities and embracing new technologies that reduced manual processes. They need to reinvent their back-office overnight to be able to survive.
Solution
SALIX provided the company with a free workflow assessment. During this assessment, SALIX met with the organization’s leadership team, with management/supervisory staff, and with the people that were doing the work. As with most organizations, managements understanding of the process was not a complete picture of what the production staff’s real-world experience.
There was duplication of efforts, lack of transparency in the process, systems that were not sharing vital data, manual processes that could easily be automated, and no real-time data dashboard to be able to effectively evaluate the effectiveness of the team. SALIX presented the current state and good, better, best options for how they could dramatically reduce costs while improving quality and turnaround time.
Benefits to Client
SALIX was able to reduce our client’s costs by over 60%. Within 18 months of engaging SALIX, the company transformed from a struggling entity trying to determine how to survive to purchasing their largest competitor. The day the acquisition was complete, SALIX receive a letter from its President communicating how vital SALIX was in the process.