Building the Right Team and Vendor Partnerships
We say it takes a village to build a company. When building a healthcare business, that village is often composed of employees, consultants, investors, friends, family - the list goes on. With the right vendor partners, healthcare providers can accomplish more with fewer resources, boosting productivity and, ultimately, improving margins. How is that possible? To explore this, let’s start by defining the vendor landscape, divided into two distinct categories: Clinical and Operational vendor stacks.
Clinical Vendor Stack
On the “Clinical” side, we have three primary vendor archetypes stand out:
- EMR (Electronic Medical Records)
- Practice Management
- RCM (Revenue Cycle Management) / Billing
While EMR, practice management, and RCM solutions each have substantial operational components, they primarily involve clinical data (PHI) and the logistics of patient care and reimbursement. Additionally, many vendors in this space offer overlapping products; for instance, an EMR solution might also provide billing (RCM) and scheduling (practice management) services. Another reason we consider these solutions as clinical vendors is that their primary users are the clinicians themselves.
On the clinical side, we also see a new wave of “point solution” vendors that address singular issues providers face when serving patients in healthcare. From prior authorization to credentialing, these specialized vendors can solve issues that become more pressing at scale, when manual processes are no longer sustainable. Additionally, point solutions often directly integrate to EMRs / RCMs as they present an opportunity for these vendors to improve their “stack” without devoting resources to improve an often sub-par internal solution.
Operational Vendor Stack
On the “Operational” side, we also see two primary vendor archetypes: (1) PEO / Payroll and (2) Finances.
PEO / Payroll Vendor Archetype
PEO/Payroll providers are often your “household names”, like ADP, Paychex, Paycor, and Gusto. In healthcare specialties with high employee turnover, such as Home Health, Home Care, ABA Therapy, and Pharmacy, payroll often relies heavily on integration with EMR and practice management systems. This integration supports essential functions like scheduling, logging hours, and mapping hours to patients served. When 50-80% of a workforce of 50-500 employees churns annually, managing payroll accurately can become complex, potentially leading to significant tax implications down the line.
Choosing a PEO/Payroll provider requires careful consideration of these factors, along with any unique issues specific to your healthcare organization. For a deeper dive into what should be top of mind for you in 2025, check out our blog on the Top 5 HR Priorities for Healthcare Providers in 2025.
Finance Vendor Archetype
Running a successful healthcare practice requires more than just clinical expertise—it demands a strong financial foundation. To bring clarity to this process, we’ve broken down the essential components of a modern financial stack into six key categories. These are the building blocks every practice needs to operate efficiently, make informed decisions, and plan for long-term growth.
Finance categories:
- Accounting and Bookkeeping
- Financial Analytics
- Capital
- Banking and Treasury
- Corporate Credit Cards
- Valuation Services
Today, we see the financial stack as a fragmented grouping of software and people. For these financial tools, the primary users are often the owner or C-suite executives who are responsible for managing the financial health of the company. These leaders rely on the financial stack to gain visibility into cash flow, profitability, and overall financial performance—insights crucial for making informed decisions about the practice’s future.
Accounting and Bookkeeping
The accounting and bookkeeping software market offers generic accounting systems like QuickBooks and Sage, which are designed for pizza shops and nail salons. However, these systems struggle to meet the needs of healthcare practices, where complexities arise from multi-location entities, complex corporate structures across state lines, and insurance claim clawbacks.
Furthermore, healthcare practices often rely on outsourced bookkeepers who lack healthcare expertise, or on internal administrators / owners juggling higher priorities than accounting every dollar in and out of the business. This gap in specialized knowledge can leave critical financial details under-accounted, increasing the risk of compliance issues and making it difficult to get a clear financial picture. Before settling for an accounting and bookkeeping software, be sure to read our article What to Look for in Healthcare Accounting Solutions for key considerations specific to healthcare practices.
Financial Analytics
Much like accounting, financial analytics solutions are seldom optimized for the healthcare field. While various platforms offer analytics, they typically fail to address metrics that matter to healthcare providers, such as revenue cycle trends, contracted rate analysis, or CPT-code profitability. This absence of industry-specific insights leaves healthcare providers managing their analyses on spreadsheets—an approach prone to error and overly dependent on manual inputs, which can quickly drain resources.
Larger healthcare practices may have the resources to bring analytics in-house with dedicated teams. However, small-to-medium-sized providers often face limited access to tailored financial insights, making it harder for them to make data-driven decisions that could significantly impact their financial health.
Capital
Access to capital is one of the most overlooked yet critical components of a healthcare provider’s financial stack. Small-to-medium-sized practices often struggle to secure fairly priced working capital due to limited assets on the balance sheet to collateralize, making them ineligible for traditional financing options. Large financial institutions show little interest in supporting small healthcare businesses—without the collateral or scale that banks prioritize in their underwriting processes, these practices are often left out entirely. Without institutional support or tailored loan products from banks or government programs, many providers fall into the trap of merchant cash advances (MCAs)—high-interest, short-term loans that can quickly spiral into a cycle of debt and financial instability. Flychain wrote an article about this, which you
As we explored in The Entire System is Rigged Against Independent Healthcare Providers, the current financial ecosystem is fundamentally misaligned with the realities of running a healthcare practice. To avoid becoming another casualty of this system, providers must be proactive in developing a capital strategy before capital is urgently needed. This includes understanding the financing options available, from SBA loans to healthcare-specific lines of credit, and setting up a resting line of credit in advance to weather unexpected challenges. A thoughtful capital plan not only helps providers stay financially resilient but also ensures they can invest in growth opportunities, hire staff, and manage cash flow during reimbursement delays or seasonal fluctuations—without compromising long-term stability.
Banking and Treasury
Many healthcare providers choose their bank based on proximity and familiarity rather than functionality. However, traditional banks often fall short in interoperability, lack modern user-friendly interfaces, impose high fees for essential services like wire transfers, and rely on manual processes that add unnecessary time and complexity.
In contrast, modern banking solutions prioritize user experience, providing intuitive dashboards and streamlined interfaces that simplify financial management. These solutions offer conveniences like cashback, fee-free wires and ACH, and seamless integration with other tech stacks, creating a more cohesive financial ecosystem. Currently, there’s a significant opportunity for healthcare-specific banking services, which could bring tailored benefits, such as advanced cash flow management tools or seamless support for multi-EIN practices to handle even the most complicated corporate structures, that directly support healthcare providers’ unique needs.
As outlined in our article Essential Healthcare Banking Features Every Provider Should Expect, providers should demand more from their banking partners—never settling for outdated systems that limit efficiency, transparency, or growth.
Additionally, treasury management, once accessible only to large enterprises with substantial cash reserves, is now being democratized by new treasury management solutions. With these solutions, small-to-medium-sized healthcare practices can earn over 5% on idle cash, creating additional revenue streams while benefiting from intuitive tools that make it easier to track and maximize financial resources.
Corporate Credit Cards
Many healthcare providers blend personal and business expenses on personal credit cards, complicating financial tracking, tax preparation, and reimbursement processes. This lack of separation can lead to misallocated expenses, missed reimbursements, and potential compliance issues. Implementing corporate credit cards with controlled spending limits and clear tracking mechanisms simplifies accounting, ensures accurate tax filings, and improves overall financial transparency.
For healthcare practices, assigning corporate cards to key team members allows for spending controls that reduce unauthorized expenses, promote accountability, and provide detailed oversight of departmental budgets. Additionally, some corporate cards offer integrations with accounting software, streamlining data entry and enabling real-time expense tracking. This integration allows administrators to manage expenses efficiently, empowering strategic financial planning across the practice.
Valuation Services
Valuation services are essential for healthcare practices seeking to understand their business’s true worth, whether for growth planning, partnerships, or an eventual sale. Unlike general valuation services, healthcare-specific valuations account for unique factors like payer mix, revenue cycles, and practice specialty, offering a more accurate view of financial health and potential. For small-to-medium-sized providers, access to tailored valuation insights can clarify which variables to prioritize to enhance financial health and optimize overall business value, providing a strategic roadmap to strengthen their practice’s valuation.
Simplify Your Financial Stack with Flychain
Building the right financial stack is critical to the growth and resilience of any healthcare practice. From bookkeeping and analytics to capital access and valuation, each component plays a role in ensuring providers have the visibility, control, and support they need to run a thriving healthcare practice. But stitching together multiple disconnected vendors can create more problems than it solves—especially for time-strapped healthcare leaders.
That’s where Flychain comes in. Flychain is the all-in-one financial solution purpose-built for healthcare providers. We manage everything from accounting and financial reporting to capital, banking, analytics, credit cards, and business valuations—so you can focus on what matters most: delivering exceptional care.
Flychain: The “Switzerland” of Healthcare vendor stack
Constructing the right vendor stack is essential for healthcare practices aiming to achieve operational efficiency, financial transparency, and sustainable growth. In a landscape where healthcare technology often feels fragmented across specialized systems, Flychain stands out as a neutral, comprehensive solution—offering all the essential financial tools healthcare providers need in one platform.
Known as the “Switzerland” of healthcare vendor solutions, Flychain remains impartial, focusing solely on financial management without venturing into EMR, practice management, or RCM territories. Instead, we integrate seamlessly with these systems, ensuring accurate, streamlined accounting and clear insights into billing and financial data. By bridging critical gaps in the vendor stack, Flychain empowers healthcare providers to focus on their core mission—delivering exceptional patient care.
Optimize your financial future with Flychain. Schedule a demo to see how our platform can support your practice! Contact us at https://www.flychain.us/contact or email info@flychain.us. Together, we’ll unlock the full potential of your practice.