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Healthcare Accounting: Why Agility Matters

Agile software concept.

Agility in Healthcare

The idea of being an agile healthcare organization is not a new concept. In 2017 McKinsey produced a significant amount of work that highlighted the importance of agility in a modern clinical setting. They even presented a model which listed the characteristics and qualities of an agile organization.

organizational-agility-graph

Many other internationally renowned research firms, such as PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), have written in detail about the need for an agile evolution in healthcare. However, until recently, it still had the feeling of an ideal concept, rather than a highly embraced methodology.

The 2020 global pandemic may have ignited change. Vaccines to push back the onslaught of Covid-19 were developed in months, instead of years. And this work was done at a record-breaking pace, coordinated amongst private and public sector partners, streamlining an incredible amount of historical bureaucracy. This level of quick execution was also seen in the treatment of patients and the roll-out of vaccinations.

Healthcare organizations showed they could deliver within an agile environment while still maintaining the quality of care for patients. We believe this level of agility isn’t just the future for the clinical side, at Multiview, we also think it’s the future of healthcare finance.

The faster you can get good data, the faster you can make more informed decisions. And there are a lot of paths that can be chosen in healthcare. What services does your community need? Do you need to repurchase equipment or can you get by with what you have for another fiscal? It’s incredibly challenging to make those vital decisions if you don’t know the true and accurate financial health of your healthcare organization.

With real-time financial data, leadership teams make decisions quickly but not reckless ones. They can move the needle more confidently on things that impact overall patient care, ultimately allowing them to become better healthcare providers.

Watch the KLAS Research Spotlight that conducted interviews with dozens of Multiview clients for their technology spotlight report on Multiview ERP solution.

 

Throw a digital rock and you can hit any number of ERP solutions. However, most serve a variety of industries with very little understating and customization of these industries. It’s always a “one-size-fits-all” approach.

Clinical environments are not like other institutions. They are very complex organizations, with a range of stakeholders and competing priorities. Many have also underinvested in back-office technology over the years.

To ensure we have a robust tool that best serves the needs of modern healthcare finance teams, it was important for us to “talk the talk”. Multiview is comprised of people that have not only experience working in accounting departments, but experience working in healthcare so they have a deep understand of the challenges clinical environments face day-in, day-out. Whether you are talking to our sales team, a member of our onboarding team or asking support for help, you can be confident the Multiview team has experience walking in your shoes.

To help reinforce this, in their words, here are some of the Multiview team who work with our healthcare clients.

“When I was working at North York General Hospital, I think at one point I was using five different pieces of software in my daily role. Healthcare is notorious for having data and information silos and many of these tools don’t talk to each other. So I’d be toggling between systems or exporting a data set into excel, exporting more data from another program into excel and try to consolidate it all. It was a nightmare.”

Jeremy Dennis, MHA, Business Development Executive – Healthcare, Multiview

“I was a hospital CFO at a critical access hospital in Northwest Iowa. And I worked there for about 14 years and during my tenure, we converted to another EHR and Multiview. It was so eye-opening and life-changing in more ways than one. Some of the things that I could do in Multiview, I couldn’t do in any software that I’d worked with before. And I think it’s because finance in healthcare is a whole different animal.

For example, hospitals are very complicated from a payment mechanism perspective. They might charge Patient A $1 but take in $0.30. Yet for Patient B they may charge the same but end up with $0.50 afterwards. Every single patient’s data is different and there lies one of the fundamental problems with using traditional ERP’s in the healthcare environment. Every single patient’s data is different and it’s just overwhelming to compile.

One of the main reasons is that healthcare finance teams are usually under-resourced. And so you spend an endless amount of time trying to extract data from different sources. Just to supply the executive with information or make even the most basic of business decisions.

Yet by the time you get that information tabulated, it’s too late in the game

Multiview opened up a whole new world for me. It brought the tools I needed, it gave me the information I needed in seconds and it decreased the time that it took me to do months end. It changed the way that I did business. It wasn’t too long after that I joined Multiview. I wanted to help other finance teams in healthcare experience what I did.”

Renay Hellickson, Director of Implementation Services, Multiview

“I have worked in healthcare finance and administration for over 13 years. Much of that time for a critical access care hospital in Washington State that used Multiview. I’ve seen firsthand everything Multiview can do and how it solves the challenges that finance teams face.

Whether it’s eliminating paper processes, putting a stop to the Excel “gymnastics”, providing up-to-the-minute reporting or even just accommodating the new reality of hybrid or remote work, there is a solution for it.

I joined Multiview because I felt that all healthcare facilities, big or small, deserved the opportunity to leverage the best solutions to their problems, and we present that to the market every day.”

Amber Simon, Solutions Engineer, Multiview


Being Client Obsessed, at Multiview we work tirelessly to help drive our clients forward.  Here’s what a few of them have to say:

“There have been many instances over the years where vendors don’t understand why you want something, in the way you want it. Sometimes for very basic accounting functions. One example was patient logs; being able to sort whether they’re an inpatient, whether they have Blue Cross or important criteria.

Working with a previous vendor, they questioned why I would care about that. My immediate thought was, “Did they not understand how a hospital is paid?” Clearly, they had never worked in healthcare because it’s an important item to track. Anyone asking me those kinds of questions has clearly never put together information for an auditor for cost reporting.

My experience with the Multiview team has been the polar opposite. They understand the healthcare industry and the challenges we face. Their team is professional, prompt, courteous and they give me sensible answers that apply to the real world.”

Susan Miller, Chief Financial Officer, Faulkton Area Medical Center

“Multiview makes life in a complex challenging healthcare environment doable because most regulatory agencies or our parent company struggle for getting sound data. We can design reports which are repeatable, believable and consistent. We don’t have a lot of Excel gymnastics that we have to do afterwards and it’s always unbelievable.

I talk to a lot of people for reference calls and they struggle with a lot of the things that I’ve just talked about like reporting, ease of use for the other users, reduction of paper and customization.  There are so many ways that you can view your data. If a local hospital nearby said they were needing help installing MV, I would be happy to help them. That’s how much I love the product.”

Theresa Tabor, Controller, Mt. Ascutney Hospital

“There isn’t anything Multiview can’t do. We were an industry of paper with software that looked like it was from the 1980s. Multiview brought us into the 21st century.”

Caleb Johnson, Chief Financial Officer, Plumas District Hospital


As the healthcare industry embraces the agile evolution, we think finance professionals should be alongside them. And without real-time data on the financial health of an organization, embracing an agile methodology will be extremely challenging.

To understand more about how Multiview can help your finance team, we would love for you to get in contact with us or watch an online demo now.

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