A Bill-Only Problem

About 50% of a hospital's supply chain expenditures are paid after the product has been used. This is the bill-only transaction, and the way it has been managed for decades costs hospitals, suppliers, and ultimately patients. Watch to understand why the problem exists and why Helia fixes it before the order is placed.

The bill-only transaction

When a sales rep walks a medical device into a hospital for a joint replacement, a pacemaker, or a spinal implant, the hospital pays after the product has been used. The rep is knowledgeable about the product and its use; that part works well. What follows is where the process breaks down.

There is no alignment between supplier and hospital about price, terms, and product at the moment the device is delivered. There is usually a contract. But verifying that the product used is actually on contract at the moment of use has never been part of the transaction. By the time a mismatch surfaces, the case has closed, and the device is already in the patient.

What this costs

The bill-only process is lengthy. On the supplier side: customer service staff, inventory management, sales operations, and accounts receivable are all involved. At the hospital: the perioperative department, OR analysts, materials management, patient billing, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and purchasing are all involved in every transaction.

Getting everyone aligned about terms, products, and pricing after the fact means time, staff hours, and money spent on a problem that should have been prevented at the order.

Why existing solutions fall short

Most companies offering bill-only services find the problem, figure out what went wrong, and try to clean it up. They start with data from the supplier but use the hospital’s data as the source of truth — which makes the solution one-sided by design.

Bill-only reconciliation services do not fix the problem. They treat the symptoms.

How Helia is different

Helia fixes the bill-only problem before it starts. Contracts and pricing are validated on both sides of the transaction simultaneously, before the order is placed. When both sides agree upfront, there is nothing to reconcile. The transaction closes the same day.

The bill-only process has always been fixable. It just needed to be fixed at the right point, before the order, not after the invoice.