Margins are tightening across every corner of healthcare. From orthodontics to orthopedics and from pediatrics to pets, rising operating costs, slowing reimbursement, and growing patient-pay balances put constant pressure on the bottom line.
So how do you stay competitive and profitable in today’s market? It’s about not adding hours, cutting corners, or losing sleep.
It’s about reclaiming revenue that’s silently slipping away. Two of the most effective ways to do that are:
- Automated accounts receivable (AR)
- Compliant surcharging
Together, these capabilities accelerate cash flow, simplify financial operations, and lower overhead — all without adding to your staff’s workload or disrupting the patient experience.
Why providers lose revenue in the first place
Healthcare operations are riddled with cracks where revenue leaks out. On their own, each loss may seem minor. But across hundreds of patient encounters and locations, small revenue leaks add up fast — quietly eroding your bottom line.
- Delayed or inaccurate payment posting
- Manual reconciliation errors
- Slow patient collections
- Rising credit card processing fees
- Aging balances that never get resolved
- Denials caused by eligibility or data issues
It’s time to reclaim the revenue that’s yours.
Four ways healthcare providers can reclaim revenue in 2026
1. Automate AR to reclaim revenue lost to delays and errors
Manual AR slows down everything: collections, reconciliation, cash flow, reporting, and staff. Automation transforms these processes from reactive to predictable.
With automated AR, providers can:
- Automatically post payments into practice management systems
- Eliminate manual reconciliation through automated matching
- Reduce data-entry errors that cause downstream issues
- Gain immediate visibility into outstanding balances and aging
These aren’t just efficiency gains — they’re profitability wins. Every delayed payment and every preventable denial represents revenue waiting to be reclaimed.
2. Offer patients more ways to pay — and speed up collections
Convenience drives faster collections. Today’s patients and pet owners expect digital, mobile-friendly payment experiences that match consumer standards.
Practices reclaim revenue more quickly by offering:
- Online and mobile payments
- Text-to-pay links
- Card-on-file for returning visits
- Contactless checkout
When you remove friction from the payment process, cash flows faster — and staff spend less time tracking down past-due balances.
3. Use compliant surcharging and avoid processing fees
Surcharging is an approach practices take to offset merchant credit card processing costs and improve margins.
By adding a small, clearly disclosed fee to qualifying credit card transactions, practices can recover processing expenses while keeping treatment prices stable and continuing to invest in quality care.
With standardized, compliant surcharging in place, practices can reduce costs on every eligible credit card transaction.
Surcharging software ensures:
- Automated fee calculation across all payment channels
- Accurate disclosures to maintain compliance
- Consistent rules across locations, providers, and devices
- Reporting that shows how much the practice saves monthly
This is revenue reclamation in its purest form: You keep more of what you earn.
Surcharging in healthcare comes with different rules than other industries, and requirements change from state to state. That’s why it matters who you partner with — you need more than merchant services; you need confidence in compliance.
Choose a compliant surcharging solution designed for healthcare accounting to ensure surcharge dollars post correctly, revenue is predictable, and your team spends less time reconciling payments.
4. Use better visibility to reclaim even more revenue
Once AR and surcharging are automated, practices gain clearer visibility into:
- Cash flow trends
- Aging balances
- Collection performance
- Provider or location benchmarks
- Surcharging savings
- Time and cost reductions from automation
Use what you learn to identify new ways to increase margins, refine workflows, and forecast more accurately.
Better insights + better financial decisions = more reclaimed revenue.
Reclaim revenue with Rectangle Health
Rectangle Health’s Practice Management Bridge® software is the easiest way to:
- Automate your AR workflows
- Accelerate patient payments
- Offset processing fees through compliant surcharging
- Reduce administrative workload
- Improve cash flow and margin performance
- Stay audit-ready through built-in compliance tools
Across every specialty, providers use Rectangle Health to reclaim revenue that was previously lost to inefficiency, delays, and unnecessary costs.
Only Rectangle Health offers both automated AR and compliant surcharging
Book a demo to see how automated AR and compliant surcharging can strengthen financial performance across every location and specialty.