Case Study
Federally Qualified Health Center Halves Month-End Close Time
Bluestem Health’s month-end closes, patient refunds, patient payments, and bank reconciliations are all far easier and significantly quicker.
Organization
Bluestem Health, a five-location federally qualified health center.
Need
New software to meet its stringent financial and grant reporting demands.
Outcome
Far easier month-end closes, patient refunds, and bank reconciliations.
Understanding the situation
Federally qualified health centers — like Bluestem Health, a Nebraska-based center with five locations — have an incredible amount of reporting requirements. Because they receive federal funding and other government grants, they provide detailed monthly expenditure reports to their board, the federal government, and other grantors.
Bluestem’s finance processes couldn’t keep up. Finances were tallied in very basic software while grants were tracked in spreadsheets. Bluestem’s finance team knew it needed new finance software to meet its reporting demands.
Exploring the challenge
Bluestem asked its auditor — CLA — about better financial software options. CLA has deep knowledge about many financial software systems and thought Sage Intacct would be a good fit for Bluestem. Sage Intacct automates financial reporting, offers customizable dashboards, and seamlessly integrates with hundreds of other software systems.
Make your financial reporting requirements a cinch.
Sage Intacct is especially beneficial to health care organizations because of its electronic medical record integration, EMRConnect. CLA configured EMRConnect to automatically link with Bluestem’s practice management system for seamless data integration.
CLA also worked with management to develop a new chart of accounts for Bluestem, which had more than 5,000 accounts due to legacy strands. Sage Intacct can be set up to automatically sort accounts into cost centers. Sage Intacct cut Bluestem’s accounts from 5,000 to 150, providing a much more organized and helpful chart of accounts.
Achieving results
Bluestem’s financial processes have been transformed. What used to involve many days for the two accounting staff— even weeks in some cases — is now far easier due to automation.
Sage Intacct has sped up numerous financial processes for Bluestem Health, including:
- The company’s month-end closing process has been cut from two-and-a-half weeks to 10 days or less due to automation, including setting up recurring journal entries, the fixed asset management functions, and seamless connection with its practice management software.
- Reconciling and recording patient payments and refunds to the general ledger now takes less than an hour instead of multiple days because of Sage Intacct’s electronic medical record integration.
- Bank reconciliations are now automatic instead of taking one-and-a-half days.
- The company’s purchase order process is also far more efficient due to Sage Intacct’s automated purchasing approval process.
- Most recently, Bluestem added the prepaid expense amortization to its system, which saves hours of time-consuming calculations, reconciliation, and posting.
Sage Intacct has made our reporting requirements so easy — we’re saving a ton of time. CLA did an incredible job setting up the system to connect to everything we need and continue to provide support with our requested system modifications.
