The pressure in healthcare organizations worldwide continues to build as staff helps more patients with fewer resources. Whether you work at a hospital, in eldercare, tele-health, or smaller-scale operations, the same challenges remain: deliver a better experience—for patients and employees—without increasing costs.
Easier said than done. According to a study from Medscape, 70% of physicians spent 10 hours or more a week on paperwork and administrative tasks. Cumbersome activities keep staff busy instead of helping improve patient outcomes or the facilit. Additionally, a report by Syntellius found the two areas for improvement in healthcare finance teams were operational efficiency (82%) and financial health (75%).
Yet, there is hope. Finance teams can leverage expense management automation to replace cumbersome processes with effortless efficiency.
Here are the five things healthcare organizations should know about automating finance:
1. Automation benefits employees company-wide
There can be a misconception that automating finance processes only benefits a single team—finance. This isn’t true. Indeed, the finance team will be thrilled with higher compliance rates, improved control, and greater visibility into spending. But employees and clinical staff also benefit. An efficient and user-friendly solution frees them up to improve patient outcomes or deliver more value to the organization.
2. Proper implementation sets up success
Without the proper foundation, even the best tools can become a challenge. An empathetic vendor will make ample time to understand your healthcare business before offering suggestions. They’ll take stock in your goals and become a true partner to help you succeed with your project by ensuring you have every feature necessary.
3. User adoption depends on ease-of-use
Simply put, if a tool is hard to use, it will be difficult to convince staff to try. Worse yet, if word spreads that a new piece of software isn’t user-friendly, you can almost certainly expect adoption will suffer. Look for a solution that can work for everyone at the company and include a diverse group of employees when learning about it. For example, solutions with OCR (optical character recognition) technology and a mobile app can help eliminate many of the frustrations associated with manual processes.
4. Enforcing compliance should be automatic
Questioning whether an expense is compliant or not isn’t worth the effort. Instead, choosing a solution that helps to enforce policy compliance automatically serves everyone. Doctors don’t need to comb through a potentially outdated T&E policy because the software guides spending and enforces compliance.
5. Efficient processes help patients
When your staff is spending less time managing expenses, they have the energy and time to focus on other areas. For finance, this can be identifying strategic savings by consolidating vendors. Or more accurately, forecasting budgets. For physicians and other clinical staff, they have more freedom to care for patients and help their lives improve.
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