A multi-location healthcare practice indicates healthy growth. Right? It certainly should, but without advanced financial management software, healthy expansion could deteriorate to the point where you lose everything and end up working unlicensed on skidrow.
OK, this grim picture is hyperbolic. But you can’t afford to overlook the importance of financial management software in your practice’s success.
Step 1: Keep Your Data In A Safe Place That You Can Actually Remember
The Three Musketeers were right, all for one is the way to go. Alas, not everyone has read the book. When your locations aren’t on the same page, let alone the same book, you have a conglomerate of independent and inconsistent financial management systems.
Central financial management systems bind all locations to a single platform for consistent account management. You can measure each location’s performance, compare performance, and get a comprehensive overview of your practice.
Platforms are updated in real-time, providing instant access to data that reveals your practice’s exact financial status at that time. You can make informed decisions on the spot and take necessary action immediately.
Step 2: Automation Keeps Intercompany Accounting Honest And Up To Date
It’s easy to make honest mistakes when manual accounting systems are used at a single location. Now, think of the mistakes that occur when you add several practices to the mix. The mind boggles at the risks inherent in practice-wide manual systems.
You want risk-free accounting systems and that’s where automation saves the day. Automation reduces honest (and not-so-honest) mistakes in intercompany transactions, including payables, receivables, and eliminations.
The upshot is accounting processes that are as smooth as a baby’s bottom and that improve accuracy across multiple practices, freeing employees to concentrate on their core responsibilities. Your patients will be as happy as your financial manager.
Step 3: Real-Time Reporting Delivers Real-Time Solutions Across All Locations
You know that feeling when you’ve missed the big game and everyone around you can’t stop discussing the result? Well, it’s worse when people know more about your practice’s finances than you.
You don’t want to wait until the end of the month to read critical reports. Not when you could make informed decisions any time during the month.
Software with real-time dashboards, like Sage, provide up-to-date financial and operational data to support insightful decision-making. Dashboards must be user-friendly with customizable options so you receive data tailored to your practice.
Step 4: Quickly Interpret Data Using Standardized Payables and Cash Flow Management
When each of your practice’s locations has its own payment system, the result for overall financial management is unmitigated chaos. This is a nightmare for financial managers who have enough on their plates without untangling inefficiencies, missed payments, and cash flow gaps.
You can be the hero of this story and rescue them from imminent burnout by implementing a centralized payables management system. Your managers will thank you for a much better view of payments across the board, providing clear oversight across locations.
The result for your practice: Improved cash flow visibility and fewer delays or errors in payments. Basically, burnout is averted and happier managers.
Step 5: Consolidation = Efficiency and Accuracy in Financial Statements
Manually preparing consolidated financial statements for multiple locations is time- and labor-intensive and your financial manager won’t thank you for the extra work when there’s an easier way.
That way financial software automation creates consolidated financial statements, including roll-up reports for all entities. Automated functions crunch numbers at speeds that mere human financial managers can only dream of. Not that they’ll have much time for dreaming because the extra time gives your finance team room to focus on the things that float their boat, like strategic analysis.
Step 6: Scale Up Your Practice Without Expensive, and Time-Consuming Recruitment
Growing boys and girls need good nutrition if they’re going to be healthy, fully functioning adults. Does your business need additional staff if it’s to grow into a healthy, fully functioning multiple entity? Of course not, but you need something to supplement its diet – as it were.
Software that automates repetitive processes is the perfect supplement to keep your growing practice financially healthy. What kind of supplements are we talking about? How about monthly closings, expense tracking, and reporting, for a start?
Automating tasks can have great knock-on effects that reveal a wealth of opportunities for expansion. A growing business without growing staff expenses and more productive resource management: What could be better?
Step 7: Keep A Weather Eye On Performance Across Locations
Success, it boils down to performance. The problem is, that if you don’t have a unified financial management system, it’s difficult to compare financial performance between locations.
This raises some serious questions. How can you tell which strategies are successful enough to be implemented across the board? Which do you need to scrap before they do any damage?
The answer to these thorny problems is financial management software that tracks key metrics like revenue per treatment, expenses, and capacity for each location, side by side.
You can identify high-performing locations and those that are just treading water. Simply share best practices across the organization and keep everyone afloat.
Conclusion
Throughout we’ve focused on automation, consolidation, unification, centralization, and standardization as important features in financial management systems.
That’s because all it takes to improve financial management for multi-location healthcare organizations is software that enhances efficiency and decision-making.
With software like that running your accounting system, you can scale operations smoothly and, more importantly, successfully.
