For physician practices, getting paid is only the beginning. A payment still has to be identified, reconciled against what was expected, and posted correctly before it can become useful financial information.

That process remains surprisingly manual across healthcare, where payments can arrive through different channels, in different formats and on different schedules. Encoda, a physician-practice financial health management platform, and healthcare financial automation company Anatomy are partnering to address that gap, combining payment reconciliation infrastructure with automated posting.

The partnership targets a part of the healthcare revenue cycle that can easily get overlooked. When payment data is incomplete or difficult to reconcile, the consequences extend beyond administrative workload. Posting can be delayed, accounts receivable records can become less reliable, and practices can lose visibility into their actual cash position.

The Problem Starts Before Payment Posting

Payment posting is often treated as a back-office data-entry function. In practice, much of the work begins earlier, when staff need to establish what money actually arrived and determine how it corresponds to remittance information.

Payments may be bundled, arrive electronically or through paper checks, and be accompanied by explanation of benefits documents that contain the information needed to reconcile the transaction.

Encoda says its survey found that 47% of physician practices outsource payment posting, with the company linking that burden in part to the difficulty of confirming and reconciling incoming payments.

Paper remains part of the problem. According to Encoda, more than a quarter of insurance payments to medical practices still arrive as paper checks, often alongside EOB documents that staff must manually review and enter into practice-management systems.

For revenue-cycle management teams, that creates a chain reaction. If a deposit cannot be reconciled quickly, payment posting is delayed. If posting is delayed, accounts receivable and financial reporting can also fall behind.

The partnership between Encoda and Anatomy is designed around separating those problems into two connected stages.

Anatomy Handles the Upstream Payment Data

Anatomy provides the infrastructure for receiving and normalizing payment information before it reaches the posting workflow.

Its AI-powered lockbox provides a dedicated mailing address for a healthcare organization and processes incoming paper-based payment documentation. Anatomy says its system can convert paper EOB information into standardized 835 electronic remittance files, while normalizing deposit and payment information into structured data.

The objective is to create a more consistent record of what the practice actually received.

That distinction matters because payment automation is only as reliable as the data feeding it. Automating a posting workflow without first establishing whether the underlying deposit and remittance information match can simply move errors through the system faster.

Anatomy’s role is therefore focused on the reconciliation layer: turning fragmented incoming payment information into structured, usable financial data.

Encoda Automates the Posting Layer

Encoda addresses the next stage.

Its automated payment management capabilities compare incoming remittance information against expected allowables and can release payments for posting without manual intervention when the information matches.

Exceptions are handled differently.

If, for example, a check amount does not match its EOB or an unexpected denial code appears, the transaction can be routed to a work queue for staff review rather than being automatically posted.

That exception-based model is increasingly important in revenue-cycle automation. The goal is not necessarily to remove people from every transaction, but to reserve human attention for transactions that actually require judgment.

Routine matches can move through the system automatically while discrepancies remain visible to staff.

In theory, that can change the economics of payment posting. Instead of employees spending time verifying large volumes of routine transactions, teams can concentrate on denials, mismatches and other exceptions with a direct financial impact.

A More Connected Revenue-Cycle Workflow

The strategic significance of the partnership is its attempt to connect two historically separate parts of the payment process.

Anatomy sits upstream, where payments enter the organization and are reconciled. Encoda operates downstream, where those payments are validated and posted.

Together, the companies are targeting the gap between “money received” and “money correctly recorded.”

That gap is particularly important for physician practices operating with increasingly complex payer relationships. A payment may contain multiple claims, adjustments or denial information, making accurate reconciliation essential to understanding outstanding receivables and actual reimbursement.

Automating that workflow also creates a potential data advantage. Structured payment information can feed analytics and financial-health systems more consistently than manually entered records.

For practice leaders, the value is therefore not limited to reducing keystrokes. Better payment data can improve visibility into collections, outstanding balances, payer behavior and cash flow.

Healthcare RCM Is Moving Toward Exception-Based Automation

The Encoda-Anatomy partnership fits into a larger transformation in healthcare revenue-cycle management.

Revenue-cycle organizations have spent years digitizing eligibility checks, claims submission, coding, remittance processing and denial management. Yet many workflows still contain manual handoffs between systems.

Payment reconciliation is a particularly difficult area because the data originates outside the practice’s core software environment. Checks, EOBs, electronic remittances and bank deposits do not always arrive as a single synchronized record.

That makes interoperability and data normalization as important as automation itself.

The emerging model is increasingly one in which software handles predictable transactions while humans manage exceptions. Artificial intelligence can help classify and structure information, but financial controls still depend on validation rules, audit trails and clear escalation paths.

For healthcare organizations, that distinction matters. An automated payment system that cannot explain why a transaction was posted—or why it was sent for review—can create a different operational risk from the manual process it replaces.

Encoda and Anatomy are effectively betting that the next stage of healthcare financial automation will require both sides of the equation: clean payment data entering the revenue cycle and intelligent automation acting on it downstream.

If that architecture works as intended, the result is more than faster posting. It could give physician practices a clearer connection between incoming cash, claims activity and financial reporting, while allowing revenue-cycle teams to spend less time processing routine transactions and more time resolving the exceptions that actually need human intervention.

Market Landscape

Healthcare revenue-cycle management is increasingly shifting from labor-intensive processing toward connected financial automation. Several trends are shaping that transition:

• Payment reconciliation remains fragmented: Paper checks, EOBs, electronic remittances and deposits can arrive through separate workflows, creating manual reconciliation work.
• AI is moving upstream: AI is increasingly being used to extract, normalize and classify unstructured healthcare payment information before it reaches core financial systems.
• Automation is becoming exception-driven: Rather than eliminating human review, modern RCM platforms increasingly automate routine transactions and escalate mismatches, denials and unusual payments.
• Interoperability is becoming strategic: Standardized formats such as the 835 electronic remittance can help connect payment infrastructure with practice-management and revenue-cycle systems.
• Financial visibility is the broader goal: Accurate payment data can support more timely accounts receivable management, cash-flow visibility and financial reporting.

Top Insights

• Encoda and Anatomy are connecting payment reconciliation and automated posting to reduce manual work across physician-practice revenue-cycle workflows.
• Anatomy processes payment and EOB information upstream, while Encoda automates validation and posting downstream.
• The partnership targets a persistent healthcare-finance problem: turning fragmented deposits and remittances into accurate, structured financial records.
• Exception-based automation allows routine payments to move without human intervention while sending mismatches and unusual transactions to staff.
• The broader trend is toward integrated healthcare financial infrastructure rather than isolated automation tools for individual revenue-cycle tasks.

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