When every dollar counts: the back-office as a strategic lever

Hospitals across the country are under growing financial strain. In today’s landscape, cost-cutting is no longer a strategic option; it’s a necessity. 

As margins shrink and closures rise, leadership teams are faced with difficult decisions about what can stay, what must go, and what needs to change. 

Yet, too often, the focus turns to clinical programs. 

In a recent Becker's Hospital Review interview, a leading healthcare executive out of California stated, “When faced with significant financial strain — such as what we’re anticipating from recent federal policy changes — health systems are often forced to scale back or eliminate programs that carry the highest operational costs,” said Mr. Behl.

“Ironically, these are often the most complex, resource-intensive, and critically important services — such as trauma care, behavioral health, or specialty programs — designed to support the most vulnerable populations.”

But the most sustainable opportunities for cost containment may be hidden in the operational backbone of the organization.

Instead of scaling back the programs that directly impact patients, health systems have a far greater opportunity to reclaim resources by modernizing the foundational operational workflows that quietly drain millions every year. When credentialing, enrollment, and compliance processes are streamlined and automated, dollars are freed up to strengthen clinical services and safeguard access to care.

From medical credentialing to enrollment and compliance, these workflows are essential. But when they’re fragmented, manual, and spread across too many systems, they create inefficiencies that quietly drain time, resources, and revenue.

Rethinking the “cost centers” of healthcare

For too long, the back office has been treated as a necessary but unremarkable part of healthcare: kept out of sight and out of mind. 

That mindset has allowed outdated, manual workflows to quietly drain resources, slow teams down, and inflate costs. When the back office is relegated to the background, inefficiencies take root and spread, ultimately eroding margins and limiting an organization’s ability to invest where it matters most.

The impact is measurable:

• Medical credentialing and payer enrollment delays cost hospitals over $10,000 per provider, per month in lost revenue and delayed access to care (MGMA).
• Administrative complexity accounts for 25% of U.S. healthcare spending, with provider operations among the most labor-intensive areas (JAMA).
• Many organizations rely on four or more disconnected systems to manage onboarding, renewals, and compliance, creating duplication and gaps in visibility (Kaufman Hall).

In a climate where every dollar counts, these inefficiencies aren’t just inconvenient. They’re unsustainable. Redirecting even a fraction of these wasted resources back into patient care, workforce development, or technology modernization can have an outsized impact — especially as margins tighten and demand grows.

The case for modernizing credentialing and enrollment

We see forward-thinking health systems are starting to shift their approach. Instead of asking how to cut services, they’re asking how to eliminate unnecessary friction behind the scenes.

That means taking a hard look at:

• Manual data entry across credentialing and enrollment systems.
• Siloed compliance tracking that exposes teams to risk.
• Inefficient privileging and approval chains that eat up staff time.

When addressed together, these issues reveal a powerful opportunity: operational efficiency that protects margin and preserves the programs patients rely on.

What leading teams are doing differently

The best-performing healthcare ops teams today are taking a critical lens to these processes and reimagining them as strategic levers. 

They’re building centralized systems, automating repeatable tasks, and using real-time visibility to improve outcomes across departments.

Some examples we’ve seen:

• Consolidating provider data into a single platform to eliminate redundant entries and errors.
• Automating license renewals to reduce administrative hours by the thousands.
• Standardizing medical credentialing workflows to cut onboarding timelines by up to 50%.
• Integrating enrollment and monitoring into compliance dashboards to reduce risk.

These are not just tech upgrades. They’re structural improvements that help hospitals do more with fewer resources—without sacrificing care delivery or patient safety.

It's time to bring operations to the table

When hospitals empower their ops teams to lead the charge on process improvement, they open the door to margin recovery, faster provider deployment, and greater organizational resilience.

Financial pressure may be unavoidable. But cutting programs that serve vulnerable populations doesn’t have to be. Before making hard decisions at the front lines, health systems should look for strategic wins behind the scenes.

Want to see what this looks like in action? Download our guide, Built to Withstand the Shift, or learn how Medallion helps healthcare organizations modernize medical credentialing, payer enrollment, privileging, and more at medallion.co.