How Aveiroe Europe’s Recovery Audit Services are supporting successful Healthcare organisations
In today’s constantly evolving Healthcare industry, three factors are of paramount importance to successful, high performing organisations:
- Access to working capital to invest in innovative new medicines, products, technologies, services and procedures
- Continuous learning, and evidence-based insights, to maximise operational efficiency
- Compliance with the complex array of regulations that govern the sector.
Our partners have extensive experience right across the industry, working with organisations specialising in Pharmaceutical and Biopharmaceutical R&D, Biotechnology, Medical Devices, Contract Research, Retail and Wholesale Pharmacy, Primary Care and Consumer Healthcare.
In this article we explore how Aveiroe’s Recovery Audit (“RA”) services are uniquely placed to support all three of the objectives set out above, based on our experience working in a wide range of Healthcare settings.
1. Access to working capital
RA is a specialist profession that deploys forensic accounting techniques to undertake business process audits. Our primary objective is to establish if any third parties owe your organisation money. In essence we compare ‘outcome’ to ‘intent’ and vice versa, as well as auditing by business process activity.
In recent years RA has been adopted widely across the sector. Many of our Healthcare clients value the income flowing from an audit as an additional source of funding for their research and development programmes and other corporate objectives. The income stream can be realised with no direct upfront financial investment and across all industries we’ve recovered c$2 Billion.
Our reputation is built on service excellence, and we recover billing overcharges and unbilled income with a continuous focus on minimising internal disruption.
Within the Aveiroe team we have the expertise to audit diverse contractual relationships, all types of accounting processes and transactions and every category of expenditure found in the Healthcare sector.
While we often recover significant monies relating to your core operations, typically linked to rebates, discounts, VAT accounting, pricing and credit notes etc, our skillsets extend to procurement activities right across your organisation:
- Royalties and Licencing agreements
- Marketing (including Media Buying)
- Professional Services (including Outsourcing, Recruitment, Contract Labour, etc)
- Property Contracts & Utilities
- Laboratory and Office Supplies, Equipment & Furniture,
- Facilities Management and Occupancy Costs
- Maintenance and Engineering Contracts
- Technology Expenditures – Software, Infrastructure, etc
- Travel & Expense
- Capital Expenditures across any category
We typically operate on a fully contingent basis, with fees payable in arrears based on the economic benefit arising from our review. This minimises front-end costs for our clients, and aligns fees with results, in accordance with the exploratory/investigative nature of our work and mindset.
2. Continuous Learning
In addition to making a significant profit contribution, we also shine a light on the performance of the processes we examine.
We provide actionable insights via our ‘Faculty’ Programme, working collaboratively with you to understand why profit erosion has occurred and how your procedures, systems and internal controls can be improved to reduce ongoing omissions and errors and prevent future reoccurrence of profit leakage.
Typically, we start to feedback learnings, identify possible process inefficiencies and make change recommendations from the point at which we start agreeing recoveries.
Our team have been closely involved in various Healthcare related change and transformation projects, covering both captive and outsourced Global Business Centres/Shared Service Centres and/or major systems implementations/upgrades, providing ‘real time’ assurance and insights.
As well as ensuring that expenditures and incomes are representative of the contractual terms agreed, our business process audits and contract audit programmes provide assurance on financial terms compliance, identify opportunities for improvement in contract management processes and provide you with a stronger negotiating position for future contract negotiations.
Unlike some of our competitors we do not seek to charge for our advice, we provide it because it’s part of the service. We believe this emphasis, alongside our high calibre audit staff, positions us uniquely in our sector and enables us to bring successful audits to companies that have not previously considered RA.
You can learn more about how we can support your continuous improvement programmes in our paper ‘Five Ways Aveiroe’s Faculty Services Can Help You Get It Right First Time’.
3. Compliance and risk mitigation
With the complexities of modern business systems and global supply chains, and the rigorous regulation of the Healthcare sector, success often depends on your ability to manage risk.
Are you concerned that accounting or contractual errors or omissions could be going unnoticed, or be affecting profits? Could there be a risk to your compliance and possibly your relationship with regulatory and taxation authorities?
By their very nature, our comprehensive and professional audit programmes provide the greatest assurance and comfort that your business activities are being performed diligently and controlled well. In other words, we provide a comprehensive health check.
Through our feedback and advice, we help you to instil a mindset and world class regime for examining the performance of your people, technology, processes and controls, including real-time tests where appropriate.
By shining a light on the performance of key business and financial controls we can help mitigate your exposure to commercial and financial risk from contractual services.
When we tailor end-to-end audit and compliance services across your processes, one of our objectives is always to help you minimise the risk of regulatory issues and penalties. Indeed, we go further than other audit companies by providing the following as standard:
- Identifying and correcting errors as well as identifying compliance risk
- Assisting in the preparation of relevant documentation for taxation and other regulatory authorities
- Reporting with recommendations to help minimise future risk
- Monitoring and working with clients to implement process and controls improvement.
Our advanced and innovative technologies mean we are now able to provide these valued services on a very cost-effective basis.
Testimonial
“We chose to employ Aveiroe Europe because of the reputation for thorough examination, diligent investigation and dealing with dispute resolution in a professional, patient and polite manner.
I have been very pleased with the results from their work. Without being obtrusive they have developed the required knowledge of our systems and contracts and have never let us down with their dealings with sensitive supply relationships and we’ve continued to extend their contract over many years because they continuously add value to our business. In many respects they have been exemplary as a problem-free supplier.
I have actively recommended their services across our organisation and beyond and will continue to do so. The amount of monies they have returned is many times greater than the last recovery audit company we used”.
Director of Finance and Compliance, NHS Supply Chain
Please get in touch to learn more about how we can help improve your cash flow, profits and operational efficiency, while at the same time minimising your process risk.
You can find our contact details here
About the Author
Adrian Risdall is an Associate Partner with Aveiroe Europe. A Chartered Certified Accountant (FCCA), his specialisms include financial controls and compliance, risk management, and large-scale system implementations and change programmes. His healthcare sector experience spans many years and includes senior roles working for a leading pharmacy-led health and wellbeing retailer, with a national chain of ophthalmic and dispensing opticians and in pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare manufacturing. Adrian’s responsibilities included the sponsorship and governance of Recovery Audit activities for a 5-year period. He guided those activities to achieve a threefold increase in the economic benefit obtained and has worked in the Recovery Audit industry since 2010.