When a national laboratory group’s collections could no longer keep pace with its lab volume, Advantum Health rebuilt the revenue cycle from the ground up. In five months, the engagement recovered $5.82 million against a $54 million accounts receivable backlog and grew monthly collections 514 percent.
Client: National laboratory group (anonymized). Scope: Revenue Cycle Recovery. AR under management: $139.5 million. Timeline: Five months plus a 60-day ramp.
Executive summary
A national laboratory group came to Advantum Health with a $54 million accounts receivable backlog and a collections operation that could no longer keep pace with the volume moving through its labs. Within five months, Advantum recovered $5.82 million, grew monthly collections 514 percent from month one to month five, and closed more than $4.5 million in systemic provider enrollment gaps that had quietly been blocking claims before they ever reached payers.
This was not a temporary lift in staffing. It was a full rebuild of the group’s collections engine, and the proof showed up where it mattered most: in the monthly numbers.
The challenge: a collections engine leaking value at every stage
By the time the laboratory group engaged Advantum, $54 million in accounts receivable had piled up across the network, and the problem was not a single bottleneck but several compounding at once. $44 million of the backlog had aged past 365 days, the point at which most payers treat a claim as effectively uncollectible. More than $4.5 million sat trapped in systemic provider enrollment gaps, meaning claims were denied for reasons that had nothing to do with the care delivered and everything to do with how providers were credentialed and enrolled. A meaningful share of claims never reached payers at all. They were blocked upstream, inside the group’s own billing workflow, before they were ever submitted.
The cumulative effect was a revenue cycle that lost value at nearly every stage. Cash the group had already earned was sitting idle and aging toward zero. This was not a situation a patch could fix. The organization needed its collections engine rebuilt, and it needed evidence that the rebuild was working month over month.
The solution: an operational recovery, sequenced for proof and built for scale
Advantum treated the engagement as an operational recovery at scale, sequenced to produce visible results quickly while building toward durable, full-volume performance. The work moved through four stages.
- Comprehensive A/R audit and prioritization. Advantum mapped the full $139.5 million AR portfolio, segmenting every open claim by age, dollar value, payer, and the specific reason it had stalled. That produced a clear, ranked view of where recoverable value actually lived.
- Oldest, highest-value claims first. Rather than working the queue by ease or chronology, Advantum pursued the claims carrying the most dollars at risk with the least time left, recovering the value most likely to disappear if left untouched.
- Enrollment and billing remediation. Advantum corrected the provider enrollment and credentialing gaps responsible for more than $4.5 million in blocked claims, then rebuilt the billing workflows that had been stopping clean claims before submission. Fewer preventable denials meant more claims reaching payers the first time.
- A 60-day ramp to full operations. The team scaled deliberately over a 60-day ramp, moving from targeted recovery to full-volume collections without disrupting the cash already coming in.
The results: monthly collections grew 514 percent
The clearest measure of the rebuild is the trajectory of monthly collections. The group started at $0.40 million in month one and climbed steadily to a $2.54 million peak by month five: $0.40 million in November, $0.85 million in December, $0.88 million in January, $1.10 million in February, and $2.54 million in March. A one-time recovery spike was never the goal. The curve shows a collections engine getting stronger month over month.
- $5.82 million total collected in five months
- $50.7 million of the $139.5 million AR portfolio worked
- 3,800 modifier refiles that recovered $2.93 million in previously zero-paid claims
- More than $4.5 million in provider enrollment gaps identified and closed
- 514 percent growth in monthly collections, month one to month five
- $2.54 million peak monthly collection
For the laboratory group, the outcome was more than recovered cash. The backlog that had been treated as a sunk cost became working capital again, and the rebuilt collections engine now performs at a level the organization could not reach on its own. The monthly numbers, climbing month after month, are the evidence that the gains will hold.
Recover the revenue your lab has already earned
Advantum Health helps laboratory groups and laboratories turn aged accounts receivable back into working capital. To see how a structured recovery could work for your organization, explore our healthcare revenue cycle management guide or contact the Advantum team.