Various Boston-area Hospitals
Challenges
Hospitals have a need for consistent and timely financial reporting in several dimensions that include reporting by provider and practice, by project (life-to-date) and special purpose funds, and by any number of organizational levels. Reports need to be understandable to non-financial users, many of whom are crucially interested because of the way that compensation plans are set up. More and more, reporting needs to be online and on-demand, with tight security ensuring that people see only the departments / providers / projects to which they have rights.
Our Solution
We worked with clients to create several hundred custom web-based and desktop financial reports. The reports run against financial data in GL packages including Lawson, Banner, Paragon, SMS and Solomon. The reports use the organization and account hierarchy in those databases, so they continue to work without modification when the organization or accounts change.
The reporting tools were chosen by the clients, and include SQL Server Reporting Services, Business Objects, Crystal Reports, FRx, and ReportSmith.
Security (who can run which reports) is typically folder-based. Within a report, the specific organizations, physicians and projects which can be seen by an individual are limited by high level tables maintained by finance. These high level tables limit access by working in conjunction with database views and with the manager or physician or investigator or laboratory values in the database.
Key Features
While requirements vary by hospital, a typical suite of reports includes:
- P&L, Balance Sheet, AP and AR aging and transaction, Inventory issues and Equipment purchase reports.
- Both accrual-based and cash-based reports.
- Trending, variances, and drill-down to more detail.
- Financial and non-financial statistics and ratios.
- FTE labor reports which distinguish between base and overtime.
- Project and fund encumbrances, and support for draws against Letters of Credit.
Results for Our Clients
We have worked with six different groups at three different hospitals, and have successfully assisted in designing and implanting comprehensive sets of reports. Our clients report:
- Improved availability of information for effective budgetary control and decision-making.
- Reduced time by accounting in preparing and distributing reports.
- Reduced calls from end-users, asking for supporting detail. Also, significantly reduces instances of inconsistent reports.
- Reduced run-time by scheduling reports for delivery to specified email addresses.