5 Tips on How to Improve Your Healthcare Institution’s Accounting Processes

In today’s increasingly fast-paced and volatile business environment, companies must optimize their use of resources to outpace their competition. For many organizations, it makes sense to start by enhancing finance and accounting functions, given the volume and complexity of work that finance professionals must complete daily. Overall, there’s no arguing with the fact that a high-functioning finance department is integral to an organization’s efficient functioning and fiscal health.

It’s particularly important for accounting for hospitals and healthcare providers to function at the highest possible standard of efficiency. In the healthcare sector, the consequences of poor financial management will inevitably trickle down to patients and business partners, posing potentially life-altering consequences. Hence, healthcare organizations should commit to continually auditing and improving upon their existing accounting procedures.

Here are 5 steps your healthcare institution can take to boost accounting efficiency:

1. Review Incumbent Finance Processes

It’s impossible to implement process improvements successfully without complete knowledge of your finance department’s current needs, goals, strengths, and weaknesses. Hence, before all else, it’s imperative that you schedule an in-depth audit of your organization’s finance function. This will help you identify efficiency gaps and areas for improvement in your current processes and begin brainstorming possible solutions. Instead of trying to address every problem at once, identify the issues that it would benefit your institution most to rectify immediately, and proceed from there.

2. Build Support across Your Entire Organization

Any changes you implement have a higher chance of delivering positive results if your entire organization understands and supports them. It’s important to drum up this support at every level, from senior management to the rank-and-file members of your finance team. Make sure that those involved in process improvement initiatives know what’s expected of them and what tasks they have to complete. Open yourself to input about necessary improvements from your finance professionals themselves, as they’re in the best position to identify what they need to better their workflows.

3. Automate All Basic Processes Possible

Many finance departments struggle to keep up with a high volume of menial bookkeeping tasks that are not only time-consuming, but also highly error-prone. Investing in digital accounting solutions has the potential to change the game completely for finance teams, boosting both processing speed and accuracy exponentially. By automating basic finance functions with accounting software, you can do away with redundant or duplicated tasks, perform more tasks simultaneously, and produce more accurate reports.

Implementing process automation also significantly benefits your institution’s bottom line. For one thing, the increased accuracy that automation offers eliminates the risk of costly errors on your financial statements and other documents. Furthermore, delegating basic accounting tasks to digital software frees up your human employees to focus on more value-adding pursuits. Not only will your finance team members have more time and space to contribute actively to your organization’s goals, but they’ll likely also appreciate the chance to utilize their skills and expertise for more interesting work.

4. Beef Up Close Process Management

A close process contains a checklist of tasks that must be accomplished within specific timeframes. These tasks involve key personnel and often need to be completed in a certain order. Historically, accountants have used manual checklists to track the close’s progress, but this approach can waste valuable time when completed tasks aren’t reported and recorded promptly.

Close process management software can help your healthcare institution better organize the close process. Its most helpful functions include automatically managing task lists, sending real-time notifications, and generating reports for efficient progress tracking. Having these tools at your disposal makes the overall process of monitoring a close more transparent, streamlined, and efficient. Instead of waiting for manual notice on completed tasks, your finance team can move on to other activities with confidence that they’ll be immediately notified of any important updates.

5. Invest in an Account Reconciliation Solution

Accountants traditionally approach reconciliation by encoding data from a variety of different sources, including bank statements, inventory reports, their organization’s general ledger, and others. They then compare the information from these sources to pinpoint exceptions or discrepancies. Digital solutions can perform this same process in a fraction of the time it usually takes to do manually, giving human accountants more time and bandwidth to devote to resolving any detected anomalies.

Incorporating modern technology into the reconciliation process can benefit your accounting department and your healthcare organization as a whole in a host of ways. Digital reconciliation tools save time, reduce the risk of errors, and swiftly alert your accountants to any variances that might need their attention. The software also manages and stores your data securely for documentation and later auditing. Lastly, built-in reporting functions help make the entire reconciliation process more visible across the company, allowing management to gather important business insights in real time.

Trust in ANSI to Deliver on Your Company’s Healthcare Accounting Needs

Identifying current needs and leveraging contemporary technologies are key steps to improving accounting procedures at your institution. With its comprehensive slate of configurable healthcare accounting solutions and decades of experience behind it, ANSI is well-equipped to help Philippine hospitals and healthcare providers develop a more efficient, better-performing finance function. Get in touch with us today and we’ll work with you to find a solution that meets your specific requirements.