How would you spend the time gained with a 4x faster close?

For healthcare finance teams, the need to continuously re-think, reforecast and act accordingly is hard enough, which is why it is more critical than ever to leverage technology and automation to make core accounting activities, such as closing the books, as efficient as possible. This frees up more time for deeper analysis, strategy, and actionable decision-making.

In our annual Close the Books Survey, which surveyed more than 1,400 finance and accounting professionals across 60+ industries, the results revealed that Sage Intacct healthcare customers close the books four times faster than their healthcare peers that use other accounting solutions.

By doing so, our healthcare customers can spend time performing more strategic finance activities that help move the business forward.

Senior care management company Personal Healthcare, LLC knows this firsthand, as they used Sage Intacct to reduce their monthly close from one week to one day using automation, which not only saved over 400 hours annually, but also afforded the finance team more time to understanding the metrics that matter most to their organization.

Controller Israel Ostrovitsky said, “Sage Intacct gives us the flexibility to customize virtually any report and analyze our financial data using key operational metrics like cost per-patient-per-day – a measure that’s extremely important in a business a specialized as senior care.”

The secret to a faster close? More automation.

Automating time-consuming manual tasks like inter-company transactions and bank reconciliations saves Sage Intacct customers time and money, improves data accuracy, and affords the finance team more time to focus on analysis. Banyan Treatment Center, a growing drug treatment and mental health rehabilitation organization with more than a dozen locations in seven states, reduced their time to close by 40% in part through automating manual tasks. This allowed the finance team to increase time spent on financial analysis by 300%, resulting in a savings of $1 million annually via better spend analysis.

Banyan’s CFO Sean Mintz told us, “My team is over 35% more efficient, which means they are doing more value-add work, learning new finance skills, and providing more support to other functions.”

Think your organization has a good handle on your monthly close? Consider a “continuous close” – one where you’ll get the most accurate picture of your organization’s financials whenever you desire. Capturing data in real-time, performing continuous multi-entity consolidations, and running close processes on-demand throughout the month enables finance leaders to track and monitor key metrics such as cost or revenue per patient, location or CPT code, and subsequently make in-the-moment decisions to improve profitability.

Virginia Jones, PhD and Chief Operating Officer of Village Family Dental, shared with us just how much of an impact this has made on her mid-sized dental practice, saying “[Sage Intacct] identifies which offices or service lines are making money (or not), so we can decide which lines of business to expand or reduce.” She added, “Sage Intacct helps us constantly watch our profits per case, per hour, and per chair, and implement creative billing approaches to achieve a 90% higher overall revenue per unit and 7% increase in gross margins.”

So, what does this all mean for healthcare finance professionals?

With the ever-evolving healthcare landscape, today’s healthcare organizations are facing a diversity of challenges that are impacting the bottom line like never before. The American Hospital Association’s Costs of Caring report highlights a number of factors – including workforce and labor expenses, drug prices, PPE and medical supply costs, and inflation – all of which are putting an unprecedented, collective pressure on the effective delivery of care.

These challenges are combined with the shift to new care models (telehealth/virtual care, or in the home, for example), new payment models (such as value-based care) and declining health insurance reimbursements, now require healthcare finance leaders to effectively anticipate, adapt to and manage change in real-time, using the latest data and insights available to them.

Also weighing on healthcare finance leaders is the shift to the cloud. According to our Close the Books survey, 73% healthcare respondents are using cloud-based or hybrid accounting solutions. Of those still using on-premises solutions, almost 50% plan on moving to a fully cloud-based solution within 2 years.

Is a cumbersome monthly close holding you back from addressing the myriad of challenges in today’s healthcare environment? For practical strategies on how to achieve a faster, more efficient close, read our 2022 Close the Books Survey Report here.