When it comes to technology, health care providers are both on the cutting-edge and behind the times. How is this possible? Many of them are involved in advanced biotechnology and nanotech initiatives, but are also saddled with legacy systems for enterprise resource planning, accounting and supply chain management.
It is a similar situation to the one that pops up around the "Star Wars" universe, in which everyone lives in an age of warp drives yet still relies on beasts of burden to handle certain tasks. But the contradiction is probably more expensive and inconvenient for today's health care industry.
"Legacy systems are difficult to manage and indicative of broad challenges in accounting."
According to GHX, these organizations lose $5 billion each year due to the inefficiencies of their siloed legacy IT systems, which are difficult to manage and indicative of broader challenges with old financial tools:
- Manual processes are the norm. As a result, data entry errors are common, front and back offices are disconnected from each other and critical tasks get overlooked, such as an Australia-based provider once forgetting about $5 million in overtime pay.
- Integrations are rare and difficult. Health care providers already struggle to work with the many disparate systems that govern assets such as electronic health records. Their ERP and accounting software only compounds the problem by being so siloed.
- Decision-making is complicated by the high risk of financial and operational data being either stale or incorrect. For example, an organization might rely solely on an old Excel sheet to manage its personnel roster and payment schedules.
- Many legacy financial applications are hosted on-premises. As such, they are costly to maintain and upgrade. Health care providers spend about $40 billion on IT each year, and the growth in their expenditures is outpacing that of companies in most industries.
Cloud accounting, budgeting and forecasting software: The cure for the legacy system ailment
Like their counterparts in professionals services, entertainment and other fields, health care providers have looked to cloud computing as a potent source of savings and operational efficiency. Making the move to cloud ERP software was how UNITE HERE HEALTH revitalized its core accounting processes.
Health care accountants are often tied down by spreadsheet-driven processes.
The key to UHH's ERP makeover was the complementary relationship between the cloud-based applications Adaptive Insights and Intacct, optimized by RKL eSolutions Technology, an experienced partner:
- Adaptive Insights was implemented to manage its Taft-Hartley Trust Fund. With Adaptive Insights, it became possible to centralize plans, forecasts and cell notes, while also having access to real-time workflows for different teams.
- Intacct enabled UHH to scale its new processes to the hundreds of thousands of individuals it serves across the U.S. It streamlines multi-entity management, automates complex accounting processes and provides fast, flexible reporting.
With help from RKL eSolutions for evaluation, implementation and support, UHH was freed from its manual spreadsheet-driven processes. RKL eSolutions is committed to building long-term relationships that focus on the specific needs of each customer, and UHH was no exception.
Looking ahead, UHH is now well-positioned to benefit from the latest technology and receive ongoing improvements to its applications. Health care is still a field in which costs can be hard to control and legacy systems are common, but the combo of cloud software and a partner like RKL eSolutions empowers organizations to overcome these hurdles.
