[Katelin Haley, DO]

I’ll admit, the first time I saw my organizations financial statements & listened to the finance presentation to our board about a year ago, I felt like I was listening to the teacher in Charlie Brown (“whaaa, whaaaa, whaa”). The information was overwhelming, seeing the numbers on paper was overwhelming, and not fully understanding it was frustrating. Learning more about the origin of each line on the balance sheet, sitting down with our finance director and having her help me make sense of the financial statements from my view as a clinician/CMO, and not being afraid to ask questions has helped a lot.  I feel like I have a TON to learn. We started having a finance-clinical connection monthly meeting to help bridge some of the knowledge gaps for each of us. As much as I didn’t understand the financial statements when I started, our finance dept has a lot to learn about what we do in the clinics each day.

Joe gave a great analysis of this statement. The first thing that jumped out at me was the variability in payments/collectable and the large amount of adjustments.

[Katelin Haley, DO]

That’s been a challenging ballance to figure out-how much does the front-line provider want/need to know about the financial word? Some providers get into an employed position to “not have to worry” about the finance side & just rely on a salary.  Unfortunately, that sometimes leaves organizations with providers that are not fully engaged in revenue enhancemets and working toward that zero margin (as a nonprofit), which later leads to frustrated providers when their incentives aren’t as high or a poor financial year prevents raises.

I do do think the basic “practical tools” would help the front line providers.

I’ve found that sharing some of the financial “why” behind our initiatives helps get better provider engagement, but only when it’s made relateable to their daily work. One thing I’m working on is a SBIRT billing initiative for revenue enhancement. We’ve been sharing what the extra potential revenue could correlate to (ie. if X% of our eligible patients have an SBIRT done/billed it correlates to funding Y service for the clinic). It’s a delicate ballance to figure out how much financial push to share; you don’t want people to think all you focus on is the dollar and not the mission; but no margin, no mission.

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