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■ Mergers and acquisitions adding legacy systems that run on different EHR and ERP platforms
■ Different payer mix and contract terms between localized sites and systems
■ Differences in financial definitions, for example adjusted discharges and allocation methods between facilities
■ Varying agency staffing standards and labor contracting
Limited visibility across facilities slows down how quickly financial problems come to light. For instance, corporate finance might not notice revenue leakage at an outpatient site until they see the quarterly reports. Becker’ s Hospital Review reports that inefficient revenue cycle management can contribute to as much as a five percent loss in net patient revenue.
Therefore, achieving greater visibility not only supports smoother financial operations and more reliable forecasting, but also greater revenue retention.
Connected performance view
To create a more reliable, enterprise-wide financial picture, finance leads first need to establish practical foundations, which require:
■ Common frameworks and charts of accounts that apply across the enterprise
■ Standardized accounting categorizations and data definitions for example, how revenues and expenses are defined across rural clinics and inpatient wards
■ Consistent, agreed methods for allocating costs to sites and close calendars to support facility comparisons
■ A single source of truth for actuals that source systems can feed into
■ Integrated systems and reporting, for example, front-end patient registration communicating with back-end billing
More multi-site finance teams now use AIassisted financial planning and analysis. They notice a big shift: the consolidation work that once consumed the close now runs quietly in the background. Controllers now spend more time interpreting variances than reconciling data. Technology does not make decisions for you, but it does eliminate the manual reconciliation that once stood between Chief Financial Officers and defensible numbers.
Establishing these foundations augments the work that Chief Financial Officers, facility controllers, and finance teams already do. Smarter systems make jobs easier, ensure more reliable figures, and keep financial data accessible across all facilities.
Dynamic forecasting
Static, annual budgets may work in simpler times, but they do not keep up with today’ s complex and fast-moving health finance world. Relying only on historical data for forecasting means reporting delays and that leads to outdated and inaccurate insights.
Therefore, health finance needs to move toward driver-based planning, i. e., forecasting what actually causes expenses and generates revenue, which include:
■ Patient volumes
■ Service mix
■ Payer mix
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