Consulting Services, Technology Services • Published 6/15/2020 How Healthcare Finance Leaders Can Enhance Business Agility

Last updated on 6/15/2020

In times of change, it is important for organization leadership to focus on what they can control. This is especially true of healthcare organizations, which are experiencing industry-wide changes, while remaining on the front lines in our communities as we navigate recovery during an ongoing pandemic.

There are countless circumstances that healthcare finance leaders cannot change, but insight into a growing breadth of financial and operational data can empower you to gain more control through data-based decisions. In this article, we focus on three key factors that are within your reach and can help your team become more data-driven: automated financial operations, synchronized data with additional systems, and multi-dimensional analysis of key results.

Automated financial operations

Flexibility is especially important for healthcare organizations. You must be able to quickly seize emerging opportunities and rapidly pivot when new challenges arise. Unfortunately, many finance teams are still held back by disjointed processes and cumbersome systems that don’t easily adapt to new requirements. The accompanying multi-step manual processes often cannot be altered without significant disruption and risk.

Many healthcare finance leaders are turning to cloud-based systems to support greater business agility. Automation within the cloud makes it easier for finance teams to manage and modify multi-step processes and data points. Cloud financial management software also provides the real-time information you need to adapt to rapidly-changing conditions. By automating financial operations in the cloud, you can remove the manual work of measuring business performance and quickly gather the information necessary to make strategic decisions.

Synchronized data with additional systems

Trends in the industry are demanding more interoperability of financial and key performance indicator (KPI) monitoring strategies. Yet, your organization may not be equipped with the tools you need to be more data-driven. When financials are run in the cloud, data is available in real-time to stakeholders, wherever they are. Even more valuable is the ability to work in sync with other business functions to eliminate the need for reporting workarounds and spreadsheets. Cloud systems connect easily and securely to additional applications. These automated connections bring data directly into the financial management system for end-to-end processing and analysis.

Multi-dimensional analysis of key results

While the performance of an organization continues to be universally measured against financial metrics, like income statements and balance sheets, these tell only half of the story. Operational outcomes are just as important, and unlike financial metrics, business metrics are unique to your individual organization at a point in time. These metrics allow you to recover from challenges, or scale for growth, while effectively managing multiple locations, practice areas, and entities.

Cloud financial management systems that support robust, multi-dimensional data capture make it easy to understand and manage performance. Dimensional data capture enables the independent tagging of transactions, instead of traditional hardcoding to individual accounts. This allows finance teams to slice and dice both financial and unique operational and outcome data to create a more focused analysis of metrics, such as those illustrated below:

	Revenue per bed Revenue per clinician Revenue per treatment
	Number of patients served Number of encounters Number of clinicians
	P&L by location P&L actual vs. budget

Implementing new tools

Healthcare organizations are strategically seeking to automate processes, obtain deep and wide visibility, and adapt to new conditions—especially in an environment of constant change and widespread disruption. Healthcare finance leaders are in a unique role to assume a strategic partnership with their organizations in driving better planning, automation, and business intelligence. The right financial management and reporting solutions are critical drivers of the efficiency, connectivity, and visibility needed by healthcare organizations. A cloud financial management solution, such as Sage Intacct, helps deliver real-time, dimensional reporting of both financial health and operational outcomes to provide the data you need to stay nimble and make better-informed decisions.

P&N has over 15 years of experience assisting clients with the implementation of accounting and ERP software. We can help you move forward with modern financial tools to support your organization. Contact our team to start a conversation.