Managing Your Medical Practice by Preparing for the Unexpected

The global pandemic brought many unexpected challenges and changes to the healthcare industry. Medical practices and clinics had to reevaluate every process of how they consult with their patients to ensure both patient and employee safety. Making rapid decisions and changes is no easy task, but organizations that embrace the change can overcome the challenges and continue fulfilling their mission of providing quality care for their patients.
 

Review Your Financial Health

Just as you reviewed all your operating standards to ensure the safety of your employees and patients, it is important to review your financial operations – including banking relationships – to ensure that your practice is maximizing efficiencies and technology while protecting against fraud. Your relationship manager and treasury specialist can provide you the information you need to ensure the suitability of your banking services and share insights on current trends and new developments. Your bank can help your practice maximize efficiencies with:

• Tools to transition from paper to electronic disbursements. Organizations having to minimize the number of staff on site due to social distancing recommendations have found a challenge with their current payroll and vendor disbursements. Automated Clearing House (ACH) origination allows you to initiate electronic transactions that can transfer funds from your accounts to employees for payroll or to vendors’ accounts on a future scheduled date or even on a same-day timeframe. Many organizations have also transitioned to paying vendors with a Commercial Card solution designed to consolidate and streamline their payables process.
• Shifting the labor-intensive processes out of your staff’s hands and to your bank. Businesses that were required to close their offices found themselves in a dilemma with work that required in-person handling. Your bank can help take some of that off your hands by transitioning patient check payments and other incoming checks to a lockbox. The bank would accept your mail, process and deposit checks, and send data and images electronically to you the same day they are received. Account information for your daily reconciliations can be accessed through online portals or with data file transmissions. As an alternative, your traditional in-house check run can be processed by your bank at a remote location with Check Print Outsourcing.
• Recommending solutions for in-person contactless payments or online payments. The pandemic has provided an even higher need for patients or clients to pay with their card without having to touch a device for PIN or signature transactions. Many merchant processing providers today offer a wide range of terminal options with acceptance from digital wallets like Apple Pay® and Samsung Pay®. Online payment gateways are also a great method for patients or clients to make secure credit card payments on your website or payment portal.
• Fraud protection and minimizing procedural risk. According to the 2020 Association of Financial Professionals (AFP) Payments Fraud and Control Survey, 81% of companies were targets of payment fraud in 2019. In the current environment, fraudsters are exploiting the conditions of employees working on vulnerable devices and home networks. Utilizing solutions such as Positive Pay for checks and ACH Positive Pay and having dual control processes in place for disbursements and money movement can help minimize fraud risk.

We’re Here to Help

Now is a crucial time to have a trusted relationship with your bank relationship manager and treasury management specialist. They have the benefit of working with other similar organizations and can help discuss the best solutions for you, your team, and your practice. Just as you are committed to serving patients with the highest quality of care, our Amegy Bank team is committed to delivering the highest level of support to you.