Top 5 Strategic Imperatives for Hospital CFO’s in 2020
January 10, 2020
Looking ahead in 2020, healthcare leaders are keeping top industry trends and concerns in mind as they make decisions and plan for the future of their organizations. Across the industry this year, the hospital C-suite will be prioritizing a few key strategic imperatives at their hospitals and health systems.
With a customer base that includes 200 of our nation’s most prominent healthcare delivery systems and over 1,000 hospitals in the Strata network, we are in a unique position to understand what is on the minds of CFOs.
To determine these top imperatives, Strata Decision Technology surveyed executives across our Strata network. Below, you’ll find the key topics that these C-suite leaders have selected as priorities for their organizations this year.
Top Strategic Imperatives for Hospital Executives in 2020
- Utilizing Data to Drive Decisions (Service Lines & Clinicians)
Despite investing in modern cost accounting tools, many healthcare organizations have yet to get meaningful data into the hands of their leaders and physicians. This is a concern for senior leaders and operators, who need to be aligned on KPIs, targets and expectations for results to drive accountability and better decision-making in frontline care. - Reducing Variation
Even with advanced decision support systems, organizations struggle with identifying clinical and cost variation and quantifying opportunities to reduce it. It can be challenging to engage physicians to drive results, making variation one of the top concerns for CFOs going into 2020. - Increasing Accountability
Understanding labor productivity, expense/revenue variances and profitability can be a challenge to healthcare organizations working in a rapidly changing environment. With those outside Finance lacking visibility into performance, it can be tough to communicate and spark the action necessary to improve results—creating a challenge for CFOs. - Improving Financial Planning Process
Healthcare systems spend 20,000+ hours on their financial planning processes each year and often find their budget is outdated and inaccurate within the first fiscal quarter. The planning process and variance management are often rigid, causing leaders to struggle to adapt it to changing conditions throughout the year. - Growing Margin
Healthcare organizations are working hard to improve margin through both expense management and top-line growth. As leaders will continue to focus on growth, hospitals are beginning to leverage cost and margin data in performing more advanced upstream, downstream and leakage analyses.
Want to learn more? Check out some of the tools and methodologies that leaders are adopting in 2020 to take on these imperatives.