Scaling Healthcare Operations with Geographical Flexibility and Process Maturity

This article is the fourth of a four-part series describing the four BPM pillars that can reduce operational burden, improve patient outcomes, and drive resilience across the care continuum.

By Michael LeVangie, Senior Vice President of Consulting at Sagility

In today’s dynamic healthcare landscape, organizations must be agile, efficient, and resilient to meet evolving patient needs and regulatory demands. Achieving this requires more than just operational capacity — it demands a strategic blend of scalability, geographic flexibility, and process maturity. These elements empower healthcare providers to expand services, optimize costs, and maintain high-quality care across diverse populations and geographies. Sagility exemplifies this approach, offering clients a robust global delivery model and deep healthcare expertise that enable seamless adaptation to change, whether scaling clinical teams or enhancing multilingual support services.

Scaling Business Process Management

A scalable approach to process management allows organizations to respond to surges in demand, expand programs efficiently, and maintain continuity during times of change. Combining scale with mature, well-documented processes ensures that quality does not suffer as volume increases.

Sagility offers clients unmatched flexibility through our scalable operations, geographic footprint, and cross-functional healthcare expertise. Our global delivery model supports both US-based and international operations, allowing clients to access cost-effective talent without compromising quality. Whether scaling a seasonal clinical review team, launching a frailty resilience program, or supporting multilingual member services, we adapt quickly and reliably.

Enabling Operational Flexibility

Whether deploying multilingual support teams, expanding care navigation services, or adapting to new regulatory mandates, operational flexibility is a competitive advantage. It allows healthcare organizations to serve diverse populations, meet members and patients where they are, and continue delivering consistent, high-quality care.

Scale and Flexibility at Work

An example of scale, flexibility, and process maturity pertains to cost reductions involving three main areas of hospitals and health systems: engagement services, AR resolution, and clinical functions.

• Engagement Services Support: Consumers continue to demand more focus on the patient financial journey and a unified, seamless experience. Sagility brings essential capabilities to improve the patient experience pre-visit but also to address functions like prior authorizations and preventing denials. The resources providing support can be a mixture of onshore, offshore, and nearshore talent who can assist with insurance/support functions, patient communications (both inbound and outbound) as well as provide much-needed bilingual support. The review of this process, cost, and scalability can provide substantial operational cost savings, greater operational stability, and an improved patient experience.
• Accounts Receivable (AR) Resolution: Hospitals and health systems are facing increased labor costs, payer requirements, and labor shortages across the revenue cycle, while reimbursements have fallen. To offset these issues, insurance companies continue to invest in offshore engagement services to contain these costs.  Business offices looking to increase capacity, remove cost, or mitigate risk are seeing a huge impact as they look to India/ Philippines not only to meet the needed scale of their office but also, to do it at less than half the cost. The right partner can bring expertise, technology, and visibility to provide confidence for those organizations looking to reduce costs.
• Clinical support resources: Providers spend increasing amounts of time seeking prior authorization approval. The reason for this is often stated as a lack of proper documentation or staff and clinical resources to have payer conversations. Given the difficulty finding clinical resources, organizations that can gain access to clinical resources, both here in the US and in an established clinical environment, like the Philippines, have an advantage. The most frequent functions for cost reduction are nursing support, case/care management, care coaching, transitions of care, navigating network, case management referral, care plan generation, transport coordination, and remote patient monitoring. With blended delivery models, outside experts can provide the requisite scale and significantly reduce costs.

From shortening patient appointment hold times to taking the frustration out of prior authorization and billing — the right cost reduction strategies also deliver improvements in patient experience. As hospitals continue to reduce their costs they are increasingly turning to Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) service providers for the required scale, cost removal, and risk mitigation.

Improving Outcomes With Process Maturity

When organizations can focus on scale, flexibility, and process maturity their leverage in the marketplace improves immensely. Whether flexibility occurs onshore, offshore, nearshore, or “techshore,” the impact on the bottom line can help organizations get and stay ahead in the marketplace.

As healthcare organizations strive to improve outcomes while managing costs, the ability to scale operations, adapt across geographies, and implement mature processes becomes a critical differentiator. Sagility’s integrated approach — leveraging global talent, proven methodologies, and cross-functional capabilities — delivers measurable value across engagement services operations, revenue cycle management, and clinical support. By embracing flexibility and operational excellence, healthcare providers can not only reduce costs but also enhance the patient experience and position themselves for long-term success in a competitive market.

Read more in our white paper, Fixing the Friction: How Strategic Operations Management Unlocks Healthcare Efficiency at Scale, to explore how the four BPM pillars can reduce operational burden, improve patient outcomes, and drive resilience across the care continuum.