Envisioning the Hospital Finance Team of the Future

June 4, 2019

Every year, we hear more and more about how healthcare is changing. Telemedicine continues to change how patients view their healthcare experience while new payment models such as CMS’ recently announced “Primary Care First” is changing how providers view their revenue landscape.

But it isn’t just the healthcare experience or the business of healthcare that’s changing. The economics of healthcare have changed, too.

We’ve shifted from trying to boost quantity to focusing on quality. Non-traditional, potentially more agile players like Haven (Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JP Morgan’s healthcare venture), Apple, private equity and the constant stream of technology from Silicon Valley are presenting unprecedented risk to hospital’s market share.

In response, hospital finance must evolve, too. As the industry shifts, hospital finance leaders must stay ahead of this evolution by challenging themselves, their teams, and their organizations to experiment with new methodologies, mindsets and processes to drive innovation and efficiency.

That much may be obvious, but what are some areas of opportunity for leaders to develop a hospital finance structure of the future?

Becoming agile

As we think about ways that hospital finance can become more agile, we must also think about what functions should be centralized or decentralized. How can finance, through improved processes and technology, decentralize the decision-making process to allow front-line managers to drive daily efficiencies in their departments spend?

Becoming business partners with operations

It is an imperative that healthcare organizations increase financial stewardship across the spectrum of roles. The future of hospital finance involves aligning with operations to solve tough problems that only those deep in the trenches of healthcare can solve. Finance analysts will need to be let loose to conduct actual analysis, serving as the pit crew in the race to healthy margins and patient populations.

Challenging the status quo

The status quo is based on the reality of a bygone era. Those who deconstruct then redesign the status quo will; minimize the financial strain of changing market forces, maximize financial gain by quickly taking advantage of those forces and support their margin, their mission, and most importantly, their patients.

To learn more about what organizations are doing to envision the hospital finance team of the future, reach out to Strata Professional Services at [email protected].