Why you should demand consolidated billing from your locum tenens VMS

Because the average healthcare organization works with multiple locum tenens staffing agencies, they receive numerous invoices from each separate agency for different costs. Tracking and verifying so many different invoices manually costs both time and money. “Every single invoice you pay as an organization costs money. Even if you’re not sending checks anymore and it’s done through ACH, it still costs internal and external dollars,” says Thomas Lanvers, senior vice president of business development and customer success at Locumsmart. “You could have 100 invoices per month, so the complexity is enormous, but there are also hard costs associated with that.” Additionally, many healthcare organizations don’t have a finance person dedicated to processing locum tenens invoices, which means a staff member must filter them and forward emails to the finance team to pay them. The extra step of forwarding numerous invoices — and the time to explain the locum tenens process to the finance team — can be frustrating and time-consuming.

What is consolidated billing for locum tenens?

Consolidated billing means your locum tenens vendor management system (VMS) automatically does all the work for you, taking the invoices your organization receives from the different locum tenens agencies you work with and combining them into one easy-to-pay bill. A robust system will even allow you to customize every setting. So, you can choose how often you want to consolidate bills, how often you want to make a payment, how much you’ll authorize, and whether you want to issue payment manually or automatically. This means:

• Less administrative work
• One consolidated bill for easy payment
• More timely payments to vendors
• Cost savings

“It’s like saying, ‘Would you rather I send you 50 emails to talk about this one subject, or can I just send you one that concisely tells you exactly what is happening on that subject?’ You’re going to choose one,” explains Jessica Fong, business development manager at Locumsmart. “It essentially involves taking every single vendor invoice and putting it in one easy-to-pay bill.” Click the image below to download a PDF about consolidated billing: 

Don’t forget a compliance check

Consolidated billing sounds great, right? But it’s not enough on its own. One of the most time-consuming parts of the locum tenens invoice payment process is making sure the locum tenens agencies have billed you correctly. So, without a compliance check, you could end up paying the wrong amount and having to make costly corrections later. At the very least, your locum tenens VMS should run all agency invoices through a robust invoice compliance process that includes the following:

• A review of providers’ timesheets to ensure the hours they bill are categorized correctly
• Confirm travel and lodging expenses are substantiated with receipts
• Ensure providers followed guidelines for including other travel expenses
• Verification of rates, time reported, and expense totals
• Check for duplicate invoices

“A good compliance check weeds out the overbilling before passing it along for review and approval,” says Eric Landstrom, senior director of finance and operations at Locumsmart. “It’s taking work off your plate.” Click the image below to download a PDF about invoice compliance:  

Why is invoice compliance important?

The locums invoice compliance process is what Resa Konkright, director of healthcare organization management at Locumsmart, calls an “extra layer of assurance in your invoice review.” “Without a compliance check, a healthcare organization has to go back and check to make sure they’re being invoiced correctly, and no one has extra time for that,” Konkright says. Fong notes that invoice compliance offers peace of mind when employees reviewing invoices don’t have a background in finance. “Many different people in an organization might review an invoice — sometimes just for their specialty — and not all of them do it the same way. Some might be really thorough, and others are just going to pass it through and approve it,” she says. “It’s nice to know that it has been checked from a compliance standpoint and meets the compliance check at the bare minimum.” So, before you sign up with a locum tenens VMS, make sure they offer both consolidated billing and a robust invoice compliance check process. It will save you both money and time that can be better spent hiring the providers you need to staff your organization. Locumsmart’s consolidated billing and 11-point invoice compliance check can streamline and simplify work for anyone who spends hours managing invoices in addition to other daily tasks. Interested in learning more about our locum tenens solution? Contact us today.