In recent years, several technology vendors have begun promoting completely touchless PO automation as the future of bill-only workflows in hospitals. On the surface, this sounds like the ideal scenario—vendor submissions go straight through to the hospital ERP without any intervention, speeding up processes and reducing labor.
But here’s the reality: completely touchless PO automation is a myth. And worse, it can lead to significant operational and financial headaches for hospitals.
The Promise vs. Reality
These solutions claim that once a vendor submits a bill sheet, the system automatically generates a purchase order with no human interaction. That promise holds—only when everything is perfect:
But how often does that actually happen in real-world surgical environments? As anyone working in perioperative services or supply chain knows, perfect cases are rare.
The Hidden Burden on Hospitals
When the submitted data is incomplete, off-contract, or lacks an item master number, someone still has to intervene—and in these “automated” systems, that someone is always the hospital. These cases are kicked into match exceptions or error buckets. They stall in the ERP, waiting on resolution, often weeks after the procedure took place.
At that point, supply chain, periop staff, and even clinical teams are left scrambling to reconstruct what happened. There’s no context, no support from the vendor's system, and no audit trail—just a mess to clean up.
Clinical Review Is Not Optional
Some of the biggest issues in implant billing aren't just financial—they’re clinical. Vendors may submit a CAP code that doesn't align with the actual implant usage. Or bill for 10 wasted items with no explanation. A truly effective solution needs clinical intelligence baked into the workflow to catch these inconsistencies and prevent overpayments.
Kermit’s solution integrates clinical and business rules directly into the review process before anything hits the ERP. We flag inconsistencies in real time, help resolve them quickly, and support the hospital in getting the correct pricing, usage, and documentation on the record. We even help determine when waste is legitimate—or when it should be challenged.
Automation Without Oversight = Financial Leakage
Completely touchless PO automation might sound appealing, but if it’s just pushing flawed data faster into your ERP, you’re not solving the problem—you’re scaling it. And the cost shows up later in rework, delayed audits, overpayments, and lost savings.
At Kermit, we don’t believe in automation for automation’s sake. We believe in strategic automation with clinical and contractual intelligence at the core—so that hospitals can gain true efficiency without sacrificing accuracy or compliance.
Want to learn more about how we approach bill-only automation differently? Let’s talk.