Most non-acute organizations struggle with visibility into how they buy and pay for supplies. Fragmented tools and disconnected workflows make spend difficult to manage, hiding waste and increasing workload. Here’s why the problem exists — and what organizations can do about it.
Non-acute care has grown rapidly across ASCs, physician groups, dental practices, urgent care centers, and outpatient networks. Yet one challenge remains consistent: most organizations lack a clear understanding of how they buy and pay for supplies.
This is not due to a lack of effort. Instead, it’s a byproduct of fragmented workflows and systems that were never designed to operate together. We’ve seen this pattern repeatedly across growing outpatient organizations — capable teams working hard, but forced to manage spend through systems that were never designed to work together.
Fragmentation Is the Source of the Problem
For most non-acute organizations, the spend management process relies on a patchwork of disconnected systems:
- Purchasing through multiple vendor portals or a marketplace
- Invoices arriving through email, PDFs, or individual supplier portals
- Payments processed manually or through standalone bank platforms
- Inventory tracked at each site, often manually or in spreadsheets
Each tool or step serves a purpose — but none were built to work as one cohesive workflow. As a result, leaders and teams operate without a single, connected view of purchasing, inventory, invoices, or payments.
Instead of clarity, teams navigate blind spots.
The Hidden Impact of Fragmented Workflows
These disconnected processes create predictable challenges:
- Spend Leakage Stays Hidden
Without unified visibility, it becomes difficult to identify where off-contract purchases happen or where price variation appears.
- Supply Utilization Varies Across Sites
Each location buys what they think they need — leading to variation that drives unnecessary cost and inconsistency.
- Manual Workarounds Slow Teams Down
Teams rely heavily on back-and-forth communication, spreadsheet tracking, copy/paste work, and rechecking invoices. This increases workload and invites errors.
- Inventory Visibility Is Limited
Most outpatient organizations lack real-time visibility across sites, making it hard to prevent over-ordering, stockouts, or waste.
- Duplicate or Incorrect Invoices Go Uncaught
Multiple invoice channels — email, PDF, portal uploads — make AP workflows inefficient, with more delays and exceptions.
- Clinical Teams Lose Time
Instead of focusing on patients, staff spend time locating supplies, validating orders, and fixing problems caused by fragmentation.
Why Visibility Is So Hard to Achieve
True visibility requires a connected view of:
- What is being purchased
- Who is purchasing it
- At what price
- Where variation is happening
- How much inventory is on hand
- How invoices match against orders
- Which payments have been executed
Fragmented tools make this nearly impossible.
Without clarity, leaders cannot confidently answer basic spend management questions — and without control, teams cannot enforce a consistent purchasing strategy.
The Cost of the Status Quo
Non-labor spend continues to rise across outpatient care, and the lack of unified visibility amplifies the problem:
- Waste and overspend go unnoticed
- Workload increases across procurement and AP
- Leadership makes decisions with partial information
- Opportunities for savings remain hidden
- Frontline staff experience unnecessary friction
Clarity isn’t a luxury — it’s the prerequisite for control and cost stewardship.
There Is a Better Way
Modern non-acute organizations increasingly recognize that fragmented workflows cannot support sustainable financial or operational performance.
They need unified visibility, standardized workflows, and the ability to control how the organization buys, tracks, and pays.
The first step is naming the problem: non-labor spend is fragmented, and visibility must come first.
The next step is unifying workflows across purchasing, inventory, invoices, and payments — so teams and leaders can finally see the whole picture.