When the coronavirus pandemic swept the globe, hospitals, surgery centers, clinics, and other healthcare centers were among the hardest-hit organizations. According to the New York Times, hospitals lost an estimated $50 billion a month due to the pandemic, despite implementing several cost-cutting measures, such as furloughing thousands of their workers in the midst of a health crisis.

However, there is a way for hospitals, and other healthcare organizations, to stay on top of their financial situation and drive efficiency, while also continuing to save revenue. Investing in financial automation now has necessary, effective long and short-term benefits, so when another crisis occurs in the future, healthcare organizations will be prepared.

1. Account For All Assets

One of the healthcare industry’s biggest challenges is cash collectability. Many healthcare revenue teams perform their financial close manually through methods such as spreadsheets, binders, or other project management tools. These tools don’t provide a holistic overview of the organization’s process or a proper control framework.

When large influxes of transactions, which healthcare facilities often experience, are placed inside this messy, uncontrolled environment, transactions can slip through the cracks. This results in lost revenue that could’ve been funneled to an area of organizational need. Healthcare accountants must make sure their financial processes have proper controls and tracking to stay afloat in an uncontrolled environment.

2. Centralized Cloud Database

Each patient that healthcare centers treat comes with their own set of information, such as their Protected Health Information (PHI), insurance data, payment plans and methods, among other types of information. When this much information exists on a single patient, imagine how complex the process becomes when multiple facilities are factored in. With multiple systems and databases for this information, healthcare accountants spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through all the transactions and tracking the payments. Patients can also travel from one facility to another, which only further complicates matters.

Putting this data in a secure Cloud environment with appropriate financial controls not only ensures HIPAA compliance but de-clutters the financial process enough that the time-savings is invaluable to an accountant in a healthcare organization.

3. Time Freed For Value-Adding Tasks

When manual tasks such as transaction matching, account reconciliation and journal entry are automated, this frees enormous amounts of time for each healthcare accountant. When they’re not focusing on manual processes, they can put their high-level skills to better use for more strategic, value-adding activities. These activities can include the creation and management of a cash war room, planning for efforts to drive new growth, how to effectively utilize every revenue dollar earned.

Additionally, healthcare accounting and revenue teams can also continue to future-proof their financial processes with financial automation to safeguard against unforeseen business disasters, such as COVID-19. Many healthcare facilities, and their offices of finance, were caught off guard by the coronavirus pandemic and their finances suffered. Being better prepared places organizations several steps ahead of the next abrupt crisis, whenever that may be.

4. Cost and Time Savings of Automated R2R Solution

Moving healthcare revenue and accounting teams from a mostly manual process to an automated solution gains the organization both time and cost savings. Cadency by Trintech customers see a high return-on-investment with:

• Up to a 90% reduction in the number of reconciling accounts
• 30% time reduction on reconciliations for reconcilers
• Up to a 75% reduction in revenue losses

As mentioned before, these savings from implementing financial automation can greatly benefit your organization, not only in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic but well into the future. To thrive in this environment, your healthcare organization needs to consider a holistic Record to Report solution.

To learn more about the benefits of an automated R2R solution, check out our whitepaper.

Written by: Ashton Mathai