Every organization—large and small—can benefit from automating payments versus printing, signing, and sending paper checks. ECHO is helping health care provider organizations and their vendors move away from paper checks to electronic payments like ACH, and providing better security in the process. In our latest video interview, we talk with Bill Clausen, Executive Vice President at ECHO, along with Stephen Thames, CFO at Magnolia Regional Health Center, a 200-bed hospital in North Mississippi – to discuss their journey toward payment automation.
Many individuals never touch a checkbook, but an enormous number of health care institutions are still writing checks to pay their vendors. Magnolia, for instance, pays out 160 million dollars each year. Part of this video lays out the burdens and risks they experienced sending paper checks and why they decided to automate and digitize those payments using ECHO.
Thames says that the overhead associated with each check is worse than with individuals, because banks require two signatures on each check. And there is no way to track a check when a vendor asks where it is in the pipeline.
The security problems with paper checks are an even more pressing problem. Checks in the mail are a prime target for thieves, and each check contains information that makes it easy for an interceptor to create fake checks. When a bank finds a check that looks suspicious, the health care provider has to spend time verifying it, while legitimate payments might be held up.
MEDITECH has collaborated with ECHO to pre-integrate ECHO’s automated payment service (ECHO for AP) into MEDITECH’s financial platform. Clausen described how ECHO and MEDITECH collaboration has made this a “light lift” for both the MEDITECH Financial users and the IT staff.
ECHO also safeguards all sensitive financial information within its secure infrastructure, protecting data more effectively than most individual health care organizations may do. Its comprehensive security program, ECHO Guard, provides real-time, multi-layered fraud prevention.
Billing overhead is simpler for the vendor as well as the provider. Often, there is no need to rekey information when a payment comes in.
Thames says that integration with MEDITECH was crucial for their adoption of ECHO.
ECHO also offers a virtual card option that delivers funds to vendors faster, within minutes—while providing hospitals with rebate revenue similar to what some credit card programs do.
To learn more about how Magnolia leveraged ECHO’s deep integration with MEDITECH to automate their payments and move past the paper check.
Learn more about ECHO: https://www.echohealthinc.com/
Learn more about Magnolia Regional Health Center: https://www.mrhc.org/
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