In the early 90s, the Gartner Group first coined the term ERP as the next evolution of software for manufacturing companies. Before this, a manufacturing company might have a separate accounting, purchasing, inventory, bill of material, and production system. What ERP did then, and continues to do now, is combine all these systems into one in order to achieve data entry efficiency and accuracy.

This was a necessity for manufacturing. They have very challenging margins. They need every ounce of efficiency to survive as a business. And for the past 30 years, they have been streamlining their operations with ERP systems. One could argue this past March this was on full display when the global supply chain had havoc wrecked upon it because manufacturing processes (and inventories) were so lean they could not handle the disruption of the Coronavirus (e.g. toilet paper). Manufacturing has become pros at just in time production because they have to.

Healthcare does not suffer the same perils that manufacturing does. They have very decent margins and a seemingly endless checkbook from the federal government. Therefore the answer to just about every healthcare operation problem: throw bodies at the problem.

But not only is this a wasteful approach to the problem, leaving billions in unrealized profits to the business and savings to the consumer, it is a fleeting approach to the problem. Make no mistake, the day of reckoning is coming for healthcare companies where like every other industry in the history of the world, margins will be compressed.

But even before then, the quality of life and missed opportunities most healthcare companies experience due to a non-integrative data set is a problem. They have separate scheduling, records, billing, fleet management, and accounting systems. In a lot of ways, they are stuck in the 80s. The consumer and taxpayer pay for that lack of efficiency. It's why medical billing is so dysfunctional. It is why health insurance data sets are so inaccurate. And all that comes to a head with the healthcare provider. To which that provider, in addition to having to provide all that, also has a hard time really understanding in real time the profitability (or lack thereof) of their business.

So what is a Healthcare ERP? It sets out to fix this. It does this by either 1) combining all business functions into one integrated, HIPAA compliant healthcare system, or 2) it fills in the gap where an accounting system leaves off by integrating through APIs or database connections. In the later example, you may have two separate systems, but they speak to each other in a way that is fast and accurate. Thus requiring no double entry of data. When the ERP system gets done with the scheduling, service and claims, it then passes the data off to accounting seamlessly.

Seamless. Does that sound like your healthcare operation? Probably not. And because of that you have too many people, too many headaches, too many missed opportunities, and too little understanding of your business.

Vy Healthcare ERP solves that problem. Reach out, we'd love to discuss.