The COVID-19 crisis of 2020 has impacted all industries. However, few industries have been impacted as severely as the healthcare industry.
Current Issues Healthcare Organizations Face
- Emergency rooms furloughed employees due to low census levels, in the middle of a pandemic;
- Thousands, if not millions of elective procedures could not be performed due to social distancing requirements;
- Patient safety was threatened by supply chain issues and visitation policies;
- Administrative duties within healthcare organizations have been moved to remote work environments;
- Healthcare administrators wrestle with regulations that appear to change daily;
- Finance teams struggle to stay informed on various government stimulus packages while trying to manage a precarious cash flow situation.
By the second half of 2020, most healthcare organizations had restructured operations to ensure patient safety, protect employee health, comply with regulations, and triaged key business functions to ensure adequate support. However, many are struggling to understand the financial health of their organization. Accounting and finance teams have been decimated by COVID-19. Many organizations have struggled to understand their financial health for a while now, but the COVID-19 crisis has increased the risk of this lack of understanding to an uncomfortable degree. Providers and administrators are asking themselves “Are we profitable and if not, why?”
Regardless of the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare organizations, the one universal challenge in reaching a new normal is trying to gain visibility and transparency of information across the organization in order to better manage costs and link cost to outcomes and industry performance – without negatively impacting revenue and growth. One of the ways healthcare organizations can avoid over-investing in human and IT resources is to cost-effectively scale or outsource their IT systems, including their financial management systems.
As healthcare organizations strive to cost-effectively scale their business, cloud-based accounting solutions are being recognized as viable solutions. Small offices and mid-sized partnerships, practices with hundreds of specialists, plus laboratories, surgical and urgent care centers, and assisted living facilities are all looking for ways to increase revenues through faster and more accurate billing, reduce costs by automating manual processes, mitigate the risk of employee turnover or shortages, and make better, faster business decisions by gaining real-time visibility into operational and financial data. Outsourcing the accounting function can be the key to financial health and an efficient solution for the accounting and administrative cycle that is vital to success.
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