Washington County Hospital
Situation:
“Cumbersome” is how hospital administrators described the task of getting information from the facility’s Meditech system to department managers so they could investigate issues, generate reports, and engage in distributed budgeting process. It was a huge productivity drain.
Reasons:
Extracting, distributing, and analyzing department-specific data was a time-consuming, manual process that took staff away from their regular duties. As a result, costly issues went unidentified and unaddressed; reports were delayed; and budgeting was a lengthy, frustrating process.
Variances meant they had to manually pull up several different reports, pour through the data, go to the files for invoices, and work back and forth to make comparisons and calculations.
Budgeting prep work was especially onerous, requiring the creation of a file for every manager, with department stats and payroll data and last year’s general ledger.
What They Needed:
Easy-to-use resource that simplifies and customizes information access, streamlines data dissemination, and automates analysis.
What We Provided:
Intuitive software and service suite that provides instant, self-service access to relevant data and the dynamic capabilities to identify and understand variances, maximize resource allocation, control costs, improve productivity, and contribute to organizational performance.
Some of the Results:
Accuracy of data
Latency of data has been reduced by weeks, enabling managers to generate error-free reports, eliminate reporting delays, and handle variances with greater speed and accuracy. Initial budgeting activity now begins in March instead of January. Incorporating annualized data through February improves budget accuracy.
Access to data
Ability to really drill down on the details, like year-to-date expenditures by vendor, allows managers to do more of the detail work themselves, so the finance department is free to focus on more critical aspects of budgeting and planning.
Faster budgeting
Individual budget proposals are easily and automatically consolidated into the comprehensive organization-wide budget. Adjustments and recalculations can be made in seconds.
Measuring productivity
User-friendly format accommodates varying skill levels, smoothes workflow, and is attractive to all departments. Managers spend more time controlling costs, optimizing efficiency, and maximizing productivity — and are held accountable for the results. Individual performance reviews include factors such as response to variance alerts and are tied to fiscal responsibility.
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