Simplifying and Controlling Healthcare Costs: finHealth

FinHealth is a rapidly emerging player in the healthcare tech industry, but this was not Jim’s first foray into an “auditing” business. Jim founded a company back in 1988 called APEX Analytix, which focused on delivering recoveries by reclaiming billing errors ranging from duplicate payments to cash discounts to sales tax errors to returned merchandise and many types of pricing errors. As the audit industry grew, APEX Analytix was highly successful in delivering millions of dollar savings back to their clients. However, clients were searching for a better solution than reclaiming lost money 12-18 months after it occurred. It was then that APEX pioneered the concept of “real-time auditing”, a technology-enabled approach that reclaims those same errors PRIOR to the monies going out the door. To this day, the company remains the most powerful force in the marketplace to ensure payment integrity within large-scale organizations. 

By 2013, after 25 years of hard work on behalf of customers and leading APEX employees forward, APEX was ready to go off on its own and so was Jim Arnold. After extensive research and retraining himself to become a programmer, finHealth was launched. The first two and half years were spent developing and coding what Jim was looking to be the ‘killer app’ for healthcare cost control & analytics. It had to simplify the healthcare equation, and deliver hard dollar savings. finHealth seeks to perform a radical reshaping of the healthcare payment landscape. To that end, finHealth is arming folks with powerful data analytics and algorithms to minimize the well-known excesses of healthcare fraud, waste and abuse. 

The journey hitherto

The company’s first and current flagship product is finHealth Navigator. It is an easy-to-use web-based audit & analytics package designed to help large self-insured companies to safeguard their healthcare spend. It was the first project roll-out with a large retailer with over 20,000 employees. Jim met his HR/Benefits leader at a conference, who was truly intrigued by the finHealth solution offering, as well as the business model of only being paid when it delivered results. 

For this pursuit, Jim had only one demanding investor and it was Jim himself. He did quite well from APEX Analytix and put aside sufficient money to fund finHealth until things took off. He also held off on hiring until he absolutely needed to bring folks on board, after figuring out the business model and ensuring the software was highly functional. His first hire was David Hester, a senior executive who Jim worked with originally as a client of APEX (through Siemens Corporation), and who then came onboard to APEX as the Senior VP of Operations to drive even faster growth. Jim adds, “David is the most talented executive I’ve had the privilege of working with”. By providing increased transparency of costs to companies and their employees, implementing stronger internal controls and arming the folks footing the bill with better data, finHealth believes that it can reduce costs, drive increased accountability for providers and the payers, and ultimately foster better health outcomes for patients. 

finHealth is very much a “virtual” organization, with employees in North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. To supplement their workforce, finHealth makes extensive use of a network of extremely talented contractors. Jim Arnold serves as the overall leader of the team, the company has highly skilled senior individuals to head up the R&D/programming efforts, business development, marketing outreach & customer cultivation, infrastructure and information security and customer relationships.

Some of the biggest assets of finHealth are offering prospective clients a no cost “proof of concept”, real-time auditing of healthcare records, delivering their services completely on a contingent fee basis, hiring top notch team members, and delivering a world class procure-to-pay experience.

finHealth did not expand its team until it had clients firmly in place, and had created a highly functional, saleable product that finHealth was proud to put in front of elite organizations. The organization spent well over a year educating the marketplace on this new industry of “healthcare cost governance”. finHealth now has a seasoned, world-class team in place, and strong demand for their audit & analytic offering. 

Shaping the organization’s road map

APEX Analytix for over 25 years was a key factor in shaping finHealth’s road map. Achieving scalability early on was critical to finHealth’s success, which means that the “secret sauce” i.e. supporting business processes needs had to be highly automated, and not be dependent upon any one person for finHealth’s continued success. The final trigger was getting the “right folks on the bus” as early as the company could afford to do so. 

Jim’s primary learning came from his 25 years of working alongside incredible organizations like Intel, SunTrust, JP Morgan Chase, Walt Disney, Pfizer and many others to develop world-class procure-to-pay capabilities. Intel was always a fabulous executor of business processes, Walt Disney inspired a deep & sincere customer focus, and SunTrust & Verizon were incredibly loyal partners. All the knowledge came together in a really cool way as Jim was able to apply his deep procure-to-pay expertise to the rapidly escalating costs within healthcare. 

The next “big thing” for finHealth in terms of a new product is a mobile device based healthcare cost transparency tool for the employees of our clients. The team of finHealth sees themselves as the market leader in healthcare audit & analytics solutions to support large self-insured organizations. finHealth’s mission will continue to be to drive better healthcare decision-making through simplification and cost transparency, reducing overall costs, safeguarding healthcare spend with a high level of internal control, and promoting better health outcomes for large organization’s employees and their families. 

The brilliant personality behind finHealth 

Jim Arnold is the founder and CEO of finHealth. Simplifying and controlling healthcare costs might be a lofty goal but not dissimilar from Jim’s initial ambitions when Jim launched Apex Analytix back in 1988. Over 25 years, Jim was able to grow a one-man operation into a $50 million+ global company that currently serves over 200 Fortune 500 clients with audit services and software. 

“finHealth seeks to be your trusted advisor in safeguarding your healthcare dollars.”