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Life Sciences

Alleviate Payment Pains For Clinical Sites And Investigators

Imagine with me:

An investigator running a site in one of your studies logs in to see an overview of his payment history. Something seems off, so he begins to review each payment in detail, and comes across what he believes to be the source of the problem – the withholding for his first payment seems higher than what was agreed upon in the contract he signed with you. The percentage was corrected for all subsequent payments, but the original payment was never adjusted.

Rather than picking up the phone, right there in the system, he opens a claim against the payment in question and selects “Withholding” as the type of claim. He fills out the other required fields and submits the claim; the status changes to Submitted.

The field values the investigator selected trigger an automated resolution process in which the withholding percentage in the payment is compared to the details of the contract.

The automated workflow is unable to resolve the claim because the contract contains two different withholding percentages, so your clinical finance team is notified that human intervention is required. One of your clinical finance staff members picks up the claim, which changes the status to Under Review – the investigator can see that you are working on his claim.

Your clinical finance resource works with your legal team to draft an amendment to the contract that clarifies the correct withholding percentage for the site/investigator and routes the amendment for review and approval. After receiving the approval from the investigator, clinical finance issues a payment adjustment for the initial payment; the claim status changes to Resolved. Once the investigator receives the payment adjustment, he clicks the Accept Resolution button for the claim, and the claim is closed.

The process we just imagined makes use of modern business process management (BPM) technology. Want to see it in action? Send us an email and we’ll show you.

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Marin Richeson

Marin joined the life sciences industry in 2001. Over the course of her tenure, she has held roles in clinical finance, IT, quality assurance, and validation. The diversity of her experience provides her with a unique perspective on the interconnectedness of this complex, multi-faceted industry. Marin Richeson is a lead business consultant in Perficient's life sciences practice.

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