Managing Physician Preference Items with a Surgical Implant Billing Solution

As an implantable medical device vendor, in order for your surgical implant device billing to be effective, accurate, and best serve your providers, your operational tasks, like issuing invoices and managing purchase orders, as well as your communication with each site needs to be as streamlined and optimized at every stage of each case.

With the right surgical implant billing technology in your tool belt, you are better able to manage surgeon requests, lower your response time to billing teams, and provide more accurate implantable surgical device fulfillment. Here’s how the value of an AI-driven surgical implant billing solution can foster relationships with facilities, physician, and billing teams. 

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Keep surgical implant billing simple 

Billing and fulfillment of implantable surgical devices should be optimized for the people using them - namely the medical device vendors that distribute and invoice for the surgical implants, the facilities that generate purchase orders for them, and the billing teams that process payments for them. Traditional billing systems in the surgical device space now have outdated technology, and most important, complex and cumbersome end-to-end user experiences. 

A simple and streamlined user flow in a surgical implant billing solution enables medical device reps to get a more accurate picture of how their facilities and sites are interacting with their invoices - which have been opened, actioned on, and processed. A clear summary and overview of these key metrics helps medical device vendors track outstanding POs  accurately, communicate with Directors of Materials Management effectively, and manage their own inventory levels frequently. 

Unnecessary, clunky feature sets in some larger enterprise solutions that have not customized their solutions for the non-standard procurement process for implants and biologics creates additional work for healthcare facility billing teams, who are already overwhelmed with increasing workloads, and staff shortages across departments and teams, especially in response to the COVID-19 crisis. On top of which, many device vendor billing and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools are unable to transmit  important data because they lack the customization to healthcare across the entire sales cycle and funnel, from usage capture, to scheduling, replenishment, billing, replenishment, HIPAA compliance, and pricing. A more robust, AI-driven solution integrates with facility back-end operations, enabling medical device vendors, hospital billing teams, and payers to action on critical data, like missing charge capture data, immediately. 

For a medical device vendor or rep to adopt a surgical billing software, it’s design and functionality need to directly serve their needs and meet their usage expectations, primarily easing any operational hurdles or roadblocks, and enabling them to provide a consistent and reliable customer experience across all their hospital and health systems .

Medical device vendors spend an average of 65% of their time on non-selling functions. An AI-driven solution to help them more efficiently manage their surgical implant billing needs allows them to invest more time and energy on surgeon relationships, while reducing days inventory outstanding and days sales outstanding. 

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Managing physician preferences

Nurturing strong relationships with physicians by learning about and anticipating their preferences for implantable surgical devices is critical. According to one study, physician’s preference is heavily influenced by the technology of the implantable device, as well as the sales and service factors related to their vendor. Other considerations, like vendor, or manufacturer’s reputation, financial relationships with the vendor, and implant cost are less important. The relationship, or service provided by the vendor is critical to maintaining a positive relationship with key decision makers in the surgical implant buying cycle. Technology that enables and supports this process to be as smooth and seamless as possible, including monitoring and tracking physician preference makes all the difference. 

Meeting specifics needs with an AI-driven solution 

Nurturing varying relationships with different hospitals and health systems, along with specific physician preferences requires a robust, data and AI-driven technology - not a generic billing solution. 

The medical device industry is full of unique complexities and challenges. Determining which technology solution best supports your surgical implant invoicing and billing needs shouldn’t be one of them.

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To learn more about the benefits of automating surgical implant billing and invoicing at your healthcare facility, contact us for more information.