How ERPs Help Healthcare Organizations Thrive

Table of Contents

The Origins of ERP Software

ERP in Healthcare

Benefits of Healthcare ERP Software

What Sage Intacct Healthcare ERP Systems Can Do For Your Organization

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If you’re a health professional, you might be wondering “what does ERP stand for in healthcare?” or “what is an ERP system in healthcare?” These are fair questions. After all, ERPs originated in the manufacturing industry. What could software intended for manufacturing firms do for a healthcare organization?

Quite a bit, as it turns out.

ERPs offer numerous benefits to healthcare organizations, ranging from improving patient care to analyzing clinical data and establishing key performance indicators (KPIs).

First, we’ll look at the evolution of ERP software before doing a deep dive into the benefits of healthcare ERP software.

The Origins of ERP Software

The history of ERP software begins in 1960s. Large manufacturing organizations used forerunners of modern ERP software to manage inventory and quality control. By today’s standards, these software packages were simplistic. However, they represented the first time that manufacturers used computational machines to gather and analyze data with the goal of optimizing production and distribution.

Then a collaboration between IBM and heavy equipment manufacturer J.I. Case produced Materials Requirements Planning (MRP) software. By using computational machines to track and analyze data, J. I. Case was able to better coordinate between manufacturing products, procuring raw materials, and the shipment of goods to and from their factories. Their MRP software automated operations and procurement scheduling.

In the 1980s, the second generation of MRP software, called MRP II systems, came out. First generation MRP software focused on manufacturing only, while MRP II began to integrate different departments responsible for producing the company’s end product.

The first enterprise resource planning (ERP) software emerged in the 1990s. This early ERP software integrated the entire business across a single database.

ERP in Healthcare

Once ERP moved beyond the manufacturing function, it didn’t take long for other types of businesses to realize the benefits that ERP software had to offer. From distributors to retailers, ERP software has something to offer every kind of business.

And that includes healthcare organizations. Some ERPs like Sage Intacct are designed to meet the needs of healthcare organizations, including for-profit and not-for-profit offices and hospitals. Healthcare organizations including Foundation Radiology Group, Atrium Centers, and Mid-Atlantic Dental Partners use ERPs to coordinate patient care and track KPIs

Benefits of Healthcare ERP Software

ERP software offers multiple benefits to healthcare providers. Healthcare finance teams use KPIs to understand the health of their organization. In healthcare, vital KPIs can include the cost or revenue per treatment, the cost or revenue per patient, the revenue expense per location, the revenue expense per referral, P&L by contract, P&L by budget, and P&L by location.

Armed with the right healthcare ERP software, finance teams will easily be able to collect and analyze all this vital financial data. They’ll also be able to share it with key stakeholders in real time.

The benefits of healthcare ERP systems include:

• Improved Reporting Timeliness, Scope, and Accuracy

• Reduced Staff Time Spent on Reporting

• Real-Time Data Insights

A good ERP allows healthcare finance teams to stop wasting time on manual tasks and inefficient processes and start spending more time on tasks that matter, like strategic initiatives, increasing efficiencies, and driving growth. Your healthcare ERP software will help you easily unlock revenue and budget data, and plan for the future. You’ll be able to easily make disparate data actionable using KPIs and dashboards.

What Sage Intacct Healthcare ERP Systems Can Do for Your Organization

When choosing the best healthcare ERP for your organization, it’s important to consider ERP implementation time and training. It’s important to consider if you need an on-premise or cloud-based solution. On-premise software is locally installed on your networks and computers. Cloud-based solutions live in the cloud, meaning they don’t have to be downloaded. They also update automatically, so you’re always using the most to-up-date solution, and require less support from your IT staff.

Sage Intacct is the only healthcare accounting software that has been endorsed by both the AICPA and Healthcare Financial Management Association Peer Reviewed. It’s a cloud-based ERP, meaning that it offers a faster and cheaper implementation time.

If you’re like to see how switching to Sage Intacct could benefit your healthcare organization, please contact us to schedule a demo.