Why Specialized Expertise Matters in Healthcare Purchased Services & Indirect Spend Management
Healthcare organizations continue to face mounting financial pressures, making effective cost management more critical than ever. While much of the focus naturally falls on clinical costs, purchased services and indirect spend, areas such as financial and administrative functions, facilities, IT, and food services represent a significant and often under-managed opportunity for savings and performance improvement.
A recent article by Kaufman Hall, a respected consulting firm specializing in healthcare strategy and financial performance, underscores the challenges around indirect spend and the vital role of strong governance:
“Effective contract management depends on having experts who understand the complexities of their specific spend categories, whether it’s facilities, food services, security, or IT infrastructure. These experts bring critical insights into industry comparatives, vendor capabilities, and the operational nuances that general administrators may overlook. Without their input, health systems risk entering agreements that perhaps look sound on paper but fail to deliver long-term value.”
This insight reveals a key truth: expertise matters – especially when it comes to managing specialized, high-impact processes that affect an organization’s financial health.
The Risk of “One-Size-Fits-All” Providers
Some solution providers have expanded their offerings to include multiple services – often through acquisitions or strategic diversification. While this might seem appealing from a client standpoint, it introduces risk of divided focus, rigid processes / less flexibility, competing priorities and pressure to engage other services.
Purchased Services & Indirect spend categories require more than a generic approach
Vendors that position themselves as comprehensive partners across IT, supply chain, and financial management often struggle to deliver the same level of performance as specialists with decades of focus in a single area. Generic approaches often lead to reduced or no flexibility by these solution “partners.”
AP Auditing: A Specialized Service That Demands Dedicated Expertise
Data is a critical element of successful AP Audits and requires deep knowledge of health systems, their ERP’s, their processes, and the supplier community. This knowledge is crucial to delivering an audit that minimizes client involvement, identifies process breakdowns, makes recommendations with minimal supplier friction, while maximizing recovered funds.
How to Evaluate Providers for Purchased Service & Indirect Spend Services
When selecting a partner, ask:
- What is their level of experience in healthcare? Do they have depth of experience within the team, or do they only have one or two senior level people?
- Can they demonstrate specific knowledge around your organization’s internal controls or provide meaningful process improvement recommendations – not just transactional recovery?
- Do they lead with add-on services or solutions before understanding what you actually need?
The SAS Advantage
At Strategic Audit Solutions (SAS), we know that Accounts Payable Recovery Auditing is not just a financial cleanup exercise – it is a highly specialized process that requires:
✔ Decades of Industry Expertise to identify overpayments, duplicate payments, missed credits, and compliance issues.
✔ Advanced Data Analytics designed for high-volume, complex healthcare environments.
✔ Root Cause Analysis that delivers actionable insights to strengthen processes and prevent future leakage.
Unlike generalists or multi-solution providers, SAS brings singular focus and depth of experience to every engagement. This ensures maximum recovery results while minimizing disruption to your team.
For more than two decades, SAS has delivered high-performing AP Recovery Audits for health systems across the U.S. Our engagements combine the expertise of senior-level auditors with industry-leading data analytics, ensuring comprehensive recovery and actionable insights with minimal client time requirements.
Bottom Line:
Expertise is not optional – it is imperative. As Kaufman Hall suggests, without category-specific knowledge, even well-intentioned agreements can fail to deliver long-term value.
If AP Recovery Auditing is on your financial roadmap, make sure you are working with a true specialist. Learn more about SAS and how we help healthcare organizations recover more, faster.
https://www.sasrecovery.com/healthcare-audit/
Source:
https://www.kaufmanhall.com/insights/blog/climbing-healthcare-costs-focus-non-clinical-expenses-strategic-imperative
