Excel vs SaludComply for insurer authorisations: when it stops being enough
Why is Excel still the default system?
In most Spanish polyclinics and small centres, insurer authorisations are managed in a shared Excel sheet. It has three obvious advantages: zero additional cost, everyone knows how to use it, and no portal integration required. As a starting point it is reasonable. The problem appears when monthly volume grows or when the insurer mix widens: the sheet stops being a management tool and becomes a post-mortem log.
What specific problems appear with Excel?
The Excel sheet records what happened but does not warn about what will happen. Four repeated patterns: silent expiries, because no one filters in time which authorisations expire this week; late renewals, because the next-session alert does not fire automatically; rejections with no rework, because the row is marked red and stays red; and reconciliation failures, because the authorisation number in Excel does not always match the one on the invoice. Each pattern turns a valid authorisation into a returned invoice or an uncollected session.
When does Excel start costing money?
There is no universal threshold, but operational signals appear early. If the person responsible for authorisations spends more than half a day a week reviewing the sheet, you are near the limit. If invoices returned by the insurer for administrative reasons (mistyped authorisation number, expired authorisation, wrong procedure code) represent more than 3 to 5 % of monthly insurer-billed revenue, the sheet is already costing money. If management cannot answer today how much was lost last month for these reasons, the real cost is invisible but it exists.
What changes with an authorisations agent?
SaludComply works on top of the usual portals of Adeslas, Sanitas, ASISA, DKV and MAPFRE and addresses the four leakage patterns directly. It detects authorisations about to expire before they do, prioritises renewals when a session is scheduled close to the limit, identifies rejections with viable rework and leaves traceability of the authorisation number linked to each invoice. It does not replace the responsible person: it reduces the time that person spends reviewing the sheet and gives a list prioritised by impact instead of a sea of red rows.
How to evaluate whether the change makes sense?
The decision depends on three data points the clinic already has: monthly volume of authorisations with large insurers, percentage of invoices returned for administrative reasons, and weekly hours dedicated to authorisation management. The SaludComply diagnostic combines these three axes and returns an estimate of monthly loss and recoverable range in under 60 seconds, without entering patient data. If the estimate falls below the annual cost of an agent, the Excel sheet remains the right option. If it is above, the change pays for itself.
Verified sources
- DGSFP — Memoria del Servicio de Reclamaciones 2024 — contexto regulatorio sobre rechazo del siniestro en seguros de salud privados
- SaludComply — diagnóstico de autorizaciones — diagnóstico público gratuito de 60 segundos sobre fuga por autorizaciones
Related pages
Calculate revenue lost to authorisations
Use the SaludComply authorisation diagnostic to estimate monthly loss, recoverable range and operational complexity. No patient data required.