The current economic climate – which has organizations facing lower patient volumes, reduced revenue, and an overall unknown future – calls for healthcare finance executives to be even nimbler and more strategic financial managers. With the complexity surrounding understanding and explaining net revenue, managing margin, and reducing risk, executives need accurate information to make sound decisions. They require a set of tools and solutions to help them succeed now and into the future.
Addressing today’s challenges
The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the world and how we interact and work in it. Sticking to “the way things have always been done” will not get healthcare organization executives far in the current industry climate. As the world evolves, so too must healthcare finance leaders. What do CFOs need to help their organizations thrive in a new and challenging environment?
- Trusted data. Becoming a better financial manager means taking advantage of technology that allows leaders to better understand various net revenue and cost drivers. CFOs need access to relevant, timely, auditable, and actionable data that allows them to make quick and informed financial decisions.
- The ability to do more with less. Finance departments are a strategic asset, but they are being forced to operate with fewer resources than ever before. Amid the COVID-19 crisis and a struggling economy, CFOs have to manage capital spending, labor cost and productivity, and supplies, and they need to keep track of how revenue is being generated, just as they always have. But they now must do so more efficiently and with fewer resources at their disposal. Finance departments can benefit from technology and automation that increase staff efficiency and strategic impact.
- Greater focus on strategic issues. External disruptors to the healthcare field, including the proliferation of nontraditional competitors and rising mergers and acquisitions activity, continue to threaten traditional provider organizations. The CFOs of these traditional organizations need to be even more strategic today as they make financial plans for the future, taking into consideration a constantly changing healthcare landscape. Simply put, there is a need for simple, relevant, and actionable analytics and insights that allow CFOs and their finance teams to be more strategic and less transactional.
- Automation. Automating repetitive and routine manual tasks frees up CFOs and their team members’ time so they can focus on value-added analytics and strategic work.
The bottom line is that to be as efficient as possible, CFOs need a reliable set of tools and trusted, relevant data that serves as a single source of truth across their organizations. We designed the Crowe Finance Suite to meet these needs.
