65–70%
Medicare radiology reimbursement decline since 2003
Healthcare · Medical Laboratories & Imaging Centers
Reimbursement rates are falling. The only answer is a billing infrastructure that captures everything you're entitled to.
Medicare radiology reimbursement has fallen more than 65% since 2003. The 2025 fee schedule added another 2.83% cut. For imaging centers and laboratories operating on high volume and thin margins, the difference between financial health and financial distress often comes down to how cleanly LIS and EHR data flows into billing — and how quickly the revenue cycle surfaces and recovers denied claims.
-2.83%
2025 Medicare fee schedule change
35%
Of radiology denials from missing pre-auth
13+ hrs
Per week on prior auth management
154%
Patient collections increase after LIS/EHR integration
Where laboratory and imaging revenue gets lost
High-volume operations lose revenue in the details — and the details compound.
Imaging centers and laboratories depend on clean claims submitted quickly, authorized correctly, and coded with precision that reflects the complexity of the procedures being billed. When LIS and EHR data doesn't connect cleanly to billing — requiring manual code translation and data re-entry — errors enter the revenue cycle before a single claim is submitted, compounding the impact of reimbursement cuts that are already compressing top-line revenue.
LIS and EHR systems that require manual reconciliation with billing
Test volume, send-out activity, and procedure data live in the LIS. Clinical orders and patient records live in the EHR. Revenue and cost accounting live in the ERP. When those systems require manual reconciliation, the close cycle extends, coding errors persist, and the financial impact of high-volume operations is always a period behind where it needs to be.
Labs integrating LIS with billing saw A/R days cut in half and patient collections increase 154%
Prior authorization failures driving a third of all denials
Imaging and lab procedures requiring pre-authorization generate denials when authorization is missing, expired, or coded to the wrong procedure. Managing prior authorization manually — across dozens of payer types and thousands of procedures weekly — consumes 13+ staff hours per week while still generating 22–25% of total denials.
35% of radiology denials come from prior auth failures — missing, expired, or wrong procedure code
Reimbursement pressure with no offsetting cost visibility
Medicare cuts compress revenue from the top. Without procedure-level cost accounting — reagent costs, equipment depreciation, technical component overhead — management can't identify which procedures and service lines have margin left to protect, and which are now being delivered at a loss.
Medicare radiology reimbursement: from $1.00 in 2003 to $0.30–$0.35 by 2024
A/R that ages beyond recovery without systematic follow-up
Days in A/R above 35 — and aged A/R above 15% at 90 days — indicate a revenue cycle that's losing battles with denials, underpayments, and payer-specific rules that change faster than manual workflows can accommodate.
Target: Days in A/R <35; Aged A/R (90+ days) <15% — most labs exceed both thresholds
Built for laboratory and imaging financial operations
The tools that recover revenue at every step of the billing cycle.
Archer's LIS/EHR connector for NetSuite and purpose-built revenue cycle modules address the clinical data integration, authorization tracking, and cost accounting workflows where laboratories and imaging centers consistently leave money on the table.
Archer Module
EHR/EMR Integration
Archer's NetSuite connector bridges your LIS and EHR with the financial system — mapping procedure codes, test orders, and clinical documentation directly into billing workflows without manual re-entry, eliminating the reconciliation step that generates systematic coding errors in high-volume diagnostic environments.
Archer Module
Revenue Cycle Integration
End-to-end reimbursement visibility from claim submission through payment posting — surfacing prior authorization gaps, modifier-related denials, and payer-specific underpayment in real time so billing staff can identify and resubmit denied claims within the same billing cycle, before timely filing windows close.
Archer Module
Interoperability & Data Mapping
Seamless synchronization between LIS, radiology information systems, EHR platforms, and NetSuite — standardizing data formats, mapping system-specific codes to billing-appropriate identifiers, and ensuring that high-volume diagnostic data flows accurately across the full clinical-to-financial workflow.
Archer Module
Accruals Management
Automated accrual calculations for services rendered but not yet reimbursed — providing accurate period-end financial statements regardless of payer payment timing, and giving finance the clean A/R view required to manage collections proactively under declining reimbursement conditions.
What becomes possible
A billing operation that captures the revenue your procedures are entitled to.
When LIS and EHR data flows cleanly into NetSuite billing, denied claims are identified in the same cycle they occur, and procedure-level cost accounting reveals true margin, laboratories and imaging centers can protect revenue under conditions where everyone else is losing it.
154%
Patient collections improvement potential
The documented impact of LIS/EHR integration on collections
Labs that integrate clinical systems with billing report dramatic improvements in A/R performance — with days in A/R cut in half and patient collections increasing substantially. That improvement comes entirely from eliminating the manual reconciliation step that currently sits between clinical data and billing.
Faster
A/R management and collections
Denied claims identified and resubmitted in the same billing cycle
Revenue cycle integration with real-time denial visibility allows finance to identify denied and underpaid claims within the billing cycle — rather than discovering them when they've aged past the timely filing window and recovery is no longer possible.
Procedure-level
Cost and margin data
Clarity on which services are profitable at current reimbursement rates
Reagent costs, equipment depreciation, and overhead allocated at the procedure level give management the data to understand actual margin — and make informed decisions about which services to protect, renegotiate, or discontinue as reimbursement pressure continues.
Get started
Ready to recover the revenue that reimbursement pressure is leaving on the table?
Schedule a discovery call with Archer. We'll assess your LIS and EHR environment and show you what purpose-built NetSuite configuration looks like for imaging centers and laboratories at your scale.