Role of Consultant in Planning Your Financials (Healthcare)
The healthcare field is changing rapidly and growing exponentially. Over the last few years with an increased emphasis on patient-centricity and reduction of care expenses, healthcare practices need sufficient proactive planning for sustaining their business in the years to come. This contingency planning aids hospitals, clinics, private practices and other healthcare units to overcome uncertainties and hurdles in the pursuit of their extended goals.
Considering the broad spectrum of monetary aspects of running an organization to structural decision making within the care units, financial planning process assumes a critical role. A well-conceived healthcare financial plan along with a strategical map results in more efficiency for running a holistic healthcare practice, no matter how big or small the organization is. Likewise, hospital finance management involves a careful study of both healthcare and capital markets. This helps to evolve a comprehensive framework for building operating performance initiatives and implementing clinically based go-to-market strategies for maintaining the hospital bottom line and remaining competitive in the market.
The wide expertise of Healthcare Consulting Firms helps its clients to manage their strategic, financial and capital planning and decision-making processes efficiently and effectively. This clientele could include many healthcare entities like hospitals, clinics, diagnostic centres, nursing homes, medical equipment manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies and insurers.
Healthcare Financial Planning
The primary tasks involved in the Healthcare Financial Planning process may be broadly classified as-
- Developing integrated strategic financial and capital plans of the healthcare organization in line with its vision and long-term goals. For this, it is important to bear in mind that while profitability and revenue margins cannot be underestimated, patient satisfaction must be given the utmost priority for business continuity.
- Creating stringent yet effective capital allocation processes keeping in mind the infrastructure, clinical and technological resources and manpower required.
- Analyzing and assessing the forecasted financial results and the associated risks and sensitivity by comparing it with the key assumptions. A detailed market study and a close watch on the prevailing healthcare trends must be done to minimize losses due to fluctuating demands and market conditions.
- Optimizing the budgeting across the complete healthcare organization with uniformity. It is important to have sufficient margins and certain surplus (buffer) fund allocations for meeting unforeseen challenges in business.
- Designing an evolving forecasting model and tailoring processes that adapt to the rapidly changing healthcare sector. Having a robust back-up financial plan is also essential for risk mitigation.
Consultant Role in Healthcare Financial Planning
- Creating and reviewing monetary guidelines for all the individual units of the organization and providing advisory services for the same.
- Conducting detailed market research and data analysis to aid the organization’s senior management on effective strategies to increase revenue without compromising on the quality of care services.
- Reviewing the financial intricacies for all clinical, administrative and billing procedures including insurance claims and reimbursements. They must also ensure that the binding legal compliances and the prevailing government policies and regulations are thoroughly met in all reporting tasks.
- Controlling risk by appropriate mitigation techniques by scrupulously judging the probability of losses and analyzing market trends to set the pricing of patient care services suitably.
- Training, supervising and assisting the team of budget analysts, accountants, financial auditors and other clerical staff for handling the finances of the healthcare organization.
- Making strategic decisions that aid healthcare administrators to plan and implement smart business decisions.
- Helping healthcare facilities to pro-actively plan and coordinate their monetary matters without overspending. This must be done to combat the increased penetration of insurance companies and meet the higher demand for medical services.
Thus Consultants play a pivotal role in managing and monitoring huge capital investments and operational expenses for maintaining the profitability of healthcare organizations.
