HFMA ANI Conference in Las Vegas June 22 - 27th

The Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) held its Annual National Institute/Conference in Las Vegas, NV from June 22nd through June 27th. As always, the focus of the event was to provide educational opportunities for healthcare financial professionals to help them understand the ever-changing financial environment they deal with on a day-to-day basis.

This year, there was much discussion regarding the financial difficulties many healthcare providers are dealing with due to the decrease in liquidity. While still faced with increasing costs and decreasing payments, it is not unusual for healthcare providers to be operating with a negative net income. The lack of liquidity only compounds the problem by making it more difficult and expensive to obtain traditional financing such as loans. Therefore, there was strong interest among healthcare providers to discuss alternative sources of financing such as Accounts Receivable Financing.

As an exhibitor at the HFMA ANI, Sun Capital HealthCare, Inc. had the opportunity to discuss its Medical Accounts Receivable (MAR) Funding solution with a large number of attendees at the conference. It was a surprise to many attendees that they can obtain this alternative source of financing without adding debt to their balance sheet. Many attendees commented this could be an important source of financing during this period of low liquidity.

Avoiding Common Traps That Lead to Distress

The Turnaround Management Association posted an excellent article on its website, Managing to Avoid Failure; Avoiding Common Traps That Lead to Distress by Tyrone Courtman and Andres Wild, both of Cooper Parry LLP.

The article discusses that both external issues and internal issues lead to business distress and, all too frequently, to outright failure of the business. Internal issues include: complaceny, lack of objectivity in analyzing the business, not allocating time for thinking/planning, lack of strategic planning, lack of communication with employees and not providing appropriate motivation for employees. External issues are many and include cutthroat competition, harsh economic conditions, high cost of borrowing, and even the inability to obtain investments required for the business. Indeed more firms fail when market liquidity falls.

In times of low liquidity businesses must expand their thinking and explore alternative sources of financing. Accounts Receivable Funding can be an effective financing source for businesses in the healthcare, commercial and government industries during periods of low liquidity.