Intro
It’s a brave soul who takes on the challenge of running several healthcare practices. The responsibilities are myriad; to patients, employees, and stakeholders and running through it all like an undercurrent is financial management.
Granted, you won’t manage all of this on your own, but let’s remind you why getting professional financial help is one of the smartest steps you can take.
1. Consistency in Financial Reporting
Consistency is the key to successfully managing multi-office healthcare practices. Imagine the chaos if Practice A uses format AA, Practice B uses BB, and Practice C uses XYZ. You can feel the headache coming on already.
Standardization clears that headache away. Standard formatting and a central accounting system, like Sage Intacct bring order to the chaos, enabling you to track all office expenses and measure it against revenue.
“In multi-office healthcare practices, one of the biggest challenges we see is maintaining consistency in financial reporting across locations. Each office might have its own unique way of handling billing or expenses, which can lead to revenue leakage if not closely monitored.” — Matt Lescault, CEO of Lescault and Walderman Accounting.
Three steps to ensure consistency.
- Regularly audit office-specific financial reports for discrepancies.
- Create uniform billing guidelines to avoid revenue leakage.
- Train staff to ensure consistent financial processes.
You can streamline financial reporting across locations, keeping everything under one roof.
2. Optimizing Overhead and Payroll Costs
“There’s also the challenge of managing overhead—ensuring that costs like payroll and administrative expenses are optimized while still maintaining a high level of patient care.” — Matt Lescault
You cannot beat the efficiency of centralized management systems, like Sage. A centralized payroll system saves time and reduces admin costs while providing an accurate assessment of payroll-to-revenue ratios.
In the interest of fairness and consistency, keep employee benefits the same across all locations. This quashes complaints of preferential financial treatment in certain offices and ensures no one feels hard done by.
It’s a good idea to pool resources and optimize administrative overheads from a central location. However, you will need to separate offices to individually track and control expenses like utilities, rent, and equipment.
3. Handling Revenue Cycle Management Across Multiple Locations
Here we go with centralized systems again, this time to track billing and claims across all practices. Ideally, you want a system that automates claim submissions and resubmissions to reduce delays and free up time for staff to focus on core tasks.
Schedule regular reviews of denied claims. Correct whatever problems led to the denial in the first place and resubmit the claim.
Here we go with consistency in practices again, this time to establish benchmarks for accounts receivable. However, you will need to separate offices to monitor cash flow and prevent revenue bottlenecks.
“Cash flow becomes an issue if revenue cycles aren’t standardized, leading to delays in collections and operational strain.” — Matt Lescault
4. Managing Multi-Location Compliance
Compliance – there is nothing more important when it comes to regulations, from your practice to state and federal levels. Stay updated on state regulations if you operate across borders because, alas, states don’t believe in consistency.
Periodically audit each office for adherence to healthcare regulations.
Some regulations are standardized, like HIPAA to protect patient data. Staff training is necessary to ensure compliance with these important regulations. Treatments and services must also be uniformly documented to ensure regulatory compliance – and accuracy in your accounts.
If you’ve got the resources, it’s a good idea to create a compliance task force to keep an eye on location-specific risks.
5. Centralizing Tax and Financial Strategies
If there’s one thing to take away today it’s centralization. Centralized data simplifies financial management. No where is simplification more welcome than tax. Centralized multi-entity management helps you maintain tax compliance across (inconveniently inconsistent) states. This consolidates tax reporting for a clearer financial overview.
“For multi-office practices, multi-entity management is crucial to maintaining financial clarity.”- Matt Lescault
Tax is even easier when you outsource it to experts in tax strategies specifically for healthcare providers.
Generally, your financial strategy should include streamlined intercompany transactions between practices and scalable financial processes so you can expand to even more locations.
6. Leveraging Outsourcing for Multi-Office Financial Management
OK, take two things away today: centralization and outsourcing. Outsourcing doesn’t just make your life easier, it does away with the stress of financial management entirely. Outsource everything that you can, including payroll for accurate employee classification.
Outsource all accounting and financial management services that involve compliance with multi-state regulations. You can do without those headaches.
Turn to experts in healthcare-specific accounting services because they can easily manage complex multi-office billing processes and conduct external audits of your practice-wide financial management processes.
You’re guaranteed consistency, accuracy, and compliance, especially in financial reporting, leaving you to focus on patient care and satisfaction.
Closing
You can be the master of your own fate when it comes to financially managing multi-office healthcare practices. Grab several bulls by their horns at once and hope for the best or outsource financial accounting to experts in the field.
After all, if you can simplify life, leave the bulls and grab the opportunity instead.
