Premier Inc. announced in a press release the acquisition of substantially all the assets and certain liabilities of Invoice Delivery Services, LP (IDS), a provider of procure-to-pay solutions in healthcare for $80 million. The acquisition was funded with borrowings under Premier’s existing credit facility.
IDS offers digitization technologies that convert paper and PDF invoices to an electronic format to automate, streamline and simplify accounts payable processes in healthcare. IDS’s solutions include those for electronic invoicing and tracking, as well as digital payments, where the business currently processes 365,000+ transactions per month. Going forward, IDS will be integrated within Premier under the brand name of Remitra.
According to Premier’s data, complex processes and fragmented back-office technology platforms used in healthcare have impeded the adoption of automated purchasing and payment solutions. Today, Premier data shows that as many as 70% of all invoices are paper-based, and nearly 85% of healthcare purchasing is still done manually via paper checks. These processes can almost double transaction and processing fees, which add costs to healthcare. For example, the average cost associated with processing a paper check totals more than $7 per transaction, compared to $4 for electronic payments. Non-automated invoices also take nearly four times longer to process than electronic versions. Across healthcare, these manual, paper-based processes may add as much as $18 billion to $22 billion in unnecessary annual expenses.
Premier has been a reseller of IDS’s technologies for more than three years. The company’s capabilities integrate with every major commercially available enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology on the market – including Premier’s. As a result, Premier will be able to offer these capabilities to any health system, regardless of ERP or GPO affiliation. Also starting immediately, Premier will collaborate with a core group of its largest members (AdventHealth, Adventist Health, Banner Health, Baptist Health, CommonSpirit Health, Texas Health Resources, and others) to enhance the capabilities of Remitra and ensure the offering provides the greatest possible value to providers.
Scott Wooten, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Baptist Health in Jacksonville, FL, said, “Paper-based invoicing and payment by check are not only outdated, they are more expensive and introduce opportunity for error. Using this technology has the potential to cut our transaction costs, ensure greater visibility into our cash flows and free up staff to focus on other, more important duties – flexibility and savings that help us grow for the future.”
