Why You Got “Burned” by a Vendor: Are You Accountable?

“I’ve been burned by a vendor before.”

I hear this regularly from medical practice leaders. Sometimes the frustration is justified. The vendor overpromised, underperformed, provided weak implementation support, or failed to deliver the expected results.

Before placing all the blame on the vendor, however, leadership should ask a more uncomfortable question:

What responsibility did we have for the outcome?

This is not about excusing poor vendor performance. It is about understanding why the relationship failed so the practice does not repeat the same mistakes.

Did you clearly define the problem?

Many practices begin searching for a vendor before defining the problem they need to solve. Increasing ancillary revenue, improving patient engagement, reducing staff workload, and strengthening care between visits are different objectives requiring different solutions.

Before contacting vendors, define:

• The clinical or operational need
• The patient population
• The desired outcome
• The responsibilities of each party
• The measures of success

Evaluate vendors against a defined business need, not the strength of their sales presentation.

Did you validate the opportunity?

Vendor pro formas can make almost any program look attractive. They often apply aggressive eligibility, enrollment, engagement, billing, and collection assumptions to the practice’s total patient population. Ask the vendor for conservative, average, and aggressive financial models. Each should clearly show assumptions for eligibility, enrollment, retention, payer mix, code attainment, collections, vendor fees, and internal costs.

Leadership should also identify the patient populations best suited for the initial rollout. Starting too broadly can create patient misalignment, billing inconsistencies, staff confusion, and unreliable results.

The vendor may provide the projections, but practice leadership is responsible for challenging the assumptions.

Did you conduct meaningful due diligence?

A demonstration is not due diligence.

Look beyond product features and evaluate implementation support, specialty experience, staffing, patient engagement, reporting, clinical escalation, billing coordination, data access, compliance, and ongoing account management.

Speak with comparable clients. Request sample reports, workflows, and implementation plans. Understand what the vendor does and does not provide. Many failed relationships begin with responsibilities that were assumed during the sales process but never documented.

Did you choose the cheapest option?

Often, the cheapest vendor costs you the most.

A low PMPM rate means little if the vendor enrolls fewer patients, completes fewer billable services, produces weak collections, or transfers additional work to clinic staff.

Ask:

• How are patients identified and enrolled?
• What percentage engage each month?
• How many billable codes are completed per patient?
• How large are care-manager panels?
• How are clinical concerns escalated?
• What work remains with clinic staff?
• What percentage of billed services is collected?

The correct comparison is not vendor fee versus vendor fee. It is the total clinical, operational, and financial value each model produces.

Did the contract protect the practice?

Sales conversations are quickly forgotten when problems emerge. The contract becomes the operating reality.

Enrollment expectations, implementation timelines, service levels, reporting, billing responsibilities, data ownership, corrective actions, and termination rights should be clearly documented.

Leadership should negotiate how the relationship must function, not simply what the service costs. Signing a vendor’s standard agreement without meaningful review is a leadership decision.

Did you assign the right internal owner?

Practices frequently treat ancillary programs as side projects. A lower-level employee is assigned responsibility while executives and physicians provide limited support.

That employee may be capable but lack the authority to change workflows, secure physician participation, or hold the vendor accountable.

Strategic service lines need an executive sponsor and an operational owner. If no one inside the practice owns the outcome, it is difficult to demand complete ownership from the vendor.

Did physicians and staff support the program?

Even a strong vendor will struggle when physicians and staff do not support enrollment or understand the program.

Patients are less likely to participate when contacted by an unfamiliar third party without an introduction from someone they trust. Staff may resist when they do not understand the purpose or expect the program to create more work.

Position the vendor as an extension of the practice. Give physicians and staff concise talking points, referral criteria, defined responsibilities, and visibility into patient outcomes.

The vendor is responsible for engagement, but the practice must build the bridge between the patient and the new care team.

Did you design the workflow together?

A signed agreement does not create a functional workflow.

Patient identification, enrollment, consent, service delivery, escalation, documentation, billing, and collections must fit into the practice’s existing operations. Before implementation, define who:

• Identifies eligible patients
• Confirms clinical appropriateness
• Introduces and enrolls patients
• Documents consent and services
• Manages clinical escalations
• Validates and submits billable codes
• Reconciles claims and collections
• Reviews program performance

Workflow design is a shared responsibility. Practices cannot outsource the decisions governing how a program interacts with their clinicians, systems, staff, and patients.

Did you give the vendor what it needed?

Vendors sometimes underperform because they lack timely access to patient information, clinical records, scheduling data, or internal decision-makers.

Implementation delays may be blamed on the vendor even when the practice has not completed integrations, approved workflows, trained staff, delivered patient files, or assigned the necessary resources.

This does not excuse weak vendor execution. It means implementation responsibilities should be assigned to both parties with clear deadlines.

Accountability must run in both directions.

Did you actively manage the relationship?

Some practices assume the program will operate independently after implementation. Months later, leadership discovers weak enrollment, declining engagement, unresolved billing problems, or work being transferred back to staff.

Vendor management is an ongoing responsibility. Hold structured performance reviews covering:

• Eligibility and enrollment
• Patient reach and engagement
• Code attainment
• Care-manager capacity
• Clinical escalations
• Claims, denials, and collections
• Patient retention
• Staff workload
• Contractual commitments
• Clinical and financial outcomes

Each review should identify performance gaps, assign corrective actions, and establish deadlines. A dashboard without accountability is only a report.

Did you address problems early?

Vendor relationships rarely fail because of one event. Small problems are often allowed to continue until confidence in the relationship is gone.

When performance declines, determine whether the cause is the vendor, the practice, the operating model, or a combination of all three. The response may require workflow changes, training, staffing adjustments, contractual enforcement, or vendor replacement.

Waiting until the relationship is irreparable limits the practice’s options.

Did you scale before proving the model?

Launching across every provider, location, and eligible patient may create momentum, but it also magnifies unresolved problems.

Start with a controlled patient cohort, provider, or location. Validate enrollment, workflows, patient experience, clinical escalations, billing, collections, and staff workload before expanding.

A pilot should not delay action indefinitely. It should provide the evidence leadership needs to scale responsibly.

Sometimes the vendor really is the problem

Not every failed partnership is shared equally.

Some vendors overstate their capabilities, hide poor performance behind weak reporting, provide insufficient resources, miss contractual commitments, or transfer unexpected work back to the practice.

Document the gaps, compare performance with contractual obligations, and establish a corrective-action plan with deadlines. If the vendor cannot or will not improve, transition to a more appropriate partner.

Accountability does not mean accepting poor performance. It means responding with evidence, discipline, and a clear plan.

Getting burned once is an experience. Repeating it is a process failure.

Before saying, “We got burned,” ask:

• Did we define and validate the opportunity?
• Did we conduct meaningful due diligence?
• Did we select the right operating model?
• Did the contract create accountability?
• Did we assign an internal owner?
• Did physicians and staff support the initiative?
• Did we design the workflow?
• Did we meet our implementation responsibilities?
• Did we actively manage performance?
• Did we intervene early enough?

The objective is not to determine who deserves all the blame. It is to understand why the relationship failed and what must change next time.

ConnectedCare Advisory Group helps medical practices evaluate ancillary opportunities, compare vendors, negotiate terms, design workflows, and manage implementation. Our role is to structure the opportunity before a vendor is introduced and establish accountability after one is selected.

A strong vendor relationship is not created by choosing a company and hoping it performs. It is built through careful evaluation, aligned expectations, defined responsibilities, operational discipline, and accountability on both sides.

Structure the opportunity before a vendor is introduced

• ConnectedCare Advisory Group helps practices evaluate ancillary opportunities, compare vendors, negotiate terms, design workflows, and manage implementation — establishing accountability on both sides of the relationship.