5 Tips for Agile Budget Planning

by Leona Fink | Sep 15, 2021 | Business Intelligence, Financial Dashboards

5 Tips for Agile Budget Planning

It’s budget planning season, the time of year organizations evaluate the past year and conceive a plan for successfully moving forward. It can be daunting, especially as a global pandemic continues. For skilled nursing and senior living operators, planning next year’s budget requires careful scrutiny, knowing that the effects of COVID-19 are still a threat, and wondering how to plan for the unknowns.

Many lessons have been learned over the past 18 months. Traditional “business-as-usual” budgeting strategies and processes need a new approach. Corporate financial leaders know that they need the ability to react and reforecast with speed and accuracy – on an ongoing basis. The agility to match resources with strategy over time can only be achieved with a system of green data. The knowledge of where your P&L stands at any moment in time is essential to making evidence-based decisions to keep the company on course.

The 12-Month Budget

Amid ongoing, unprecedented uncertainty, a detailed long term budget may seem like a futile exercise. Yet, the need for speed, visibility, and cost control remains. Budget planning becomes a balancing act of business strategy and resource allocation.

DreamCORE Dashboards are the tool to reimagine agile, strategic budgeting.

Delivered in dynamic financials, DreamCORE Dashboards provide green data, updated daily. This strategic, robust financial tracking system looks back historically to show not only where you’ve traveled but the road ahead of you as well. Your data, assembled chronologically, with the ability to scroll and drill down by department, eliminates the scrambling to find everything you need and the shuffling of multiple sources.

Ongoing Reforecasting

DreamCORE Dashboards offer predictive analytics with a “What If” feature. Want to determine your Housekeeping budget based on PPD? Simply plug in your desired PPD and DreamCORE will calculate the amount.

The pandemic showed us the financial impact of a wildly swinging census. DreamCORE Dashboards updates your census daily, and recalculates spend-down accordingly. Each of your front line managers who make spending decisions has daily access to their budget, adjusted by census. How much better could you control expenses when all front line teams are trained to contribute to the overall company financial strategy?

5 Tips for your 2022 Budget

1.Assemble historical data for the past two years

If you’re already using DreamCORE Dashboards, this work is done and your 2022 budgeting is well underway. DreamCORE Dashboards integrate your EHR, Book of Record, and Payroll/TimeClock systems into a relevant order for evidence-based decision-making.

2. Evaluate strengths and weaknesses from this data

While this can be an arduous task, data speaks the truth. With DreamCORE Dashboards, red flag anomalies in your data alert you daily enabling the quick action to get back on course. Weaknesses can be easily reduced in real time.

3. Convene with company strategic leaders

Senior management and your finance team have valuable input. Weave the business plan into the budget, strategize and decide how to address the inevitable unknowns. Determine new KPIs and how to pivot when needed.

4. Engage your strongest front line leaders

Essentially these are your budget managers. A large proportion of the spending happens In the facilities. Your front line has insight to challenges you may not be prioritizing. Learn from them for more realistic budget planning.

5. Book a live demo of DreamCORE Dashboards

Our current clients are breathing a sigh of relief knowing they have an agile system for spending management and cost control. The “work” of creating a 12-month budget is largely complete – an easy review of historical data, a relevant view and breakdown of revenue, and daily drillable access to every dollar spent.

Budget planning for a new fiscal year enables a strategic plan for managing the revenue and expenses. The budget provides a plan for all teams in the organization to follow. Yet, the past 18 months have shown us that a static plan is useless.

With access to accurate historical financials and predictive analytics, your budget takes on a dynamic reality. Ongoing forecasting, departmental budgets adjusting to census, year over year and month over month comparisons are the new approach to financial management.

DreamCORE Dashboards is the GPS to keep your business on course to success. Contact us today to get started – you’re just 3 logins away from powerful analytics.

Role Based Access Control for Skilled Nursing Business Intelligence

by Leona Fink | Aug 25, 2021 | Business Intelligence, Financial Dashboards, Skilled Nursing Industry

Data drives decisions, evidence-based decisions.

Yet, in the world of breathtakingly fast data analytics, how can you be certain that only the right people are seeing sensitive data? This is the purpose of Role-Based Control Access (RBAC) also known as Role-Based Security (RBS).

What is Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)?

Each person in an organization has a position or a role. RBAC sets a framework whereby each employee only has access to data that is pertinent to that role. If the individual has responsibility for budget decisions for a specific department, he/she has access to that data only and no access to other departments.

Prone 2 Dream Technologies deploys RBAC for its DreamCORE Dashboards. Skilled Nursing business intelligence is delivered in drillable dashboards with a focus on Census, Overtime, Receivables, and Expenses. These are the CORE of the business and where frontline department leaders are making decisions about how to spend the company’s revenue.

These leaders are expected to contribute to the overall profitability of the company. However, they typically have to wade through data overload by signing into multiple platforms or shuffling multiple spreadsheets to find what they need to make decisions.

DreamCORE Dashboards presents the plethora of skilled nursing data in a logical, relevant format, with infinite views. RBAC narrows the scope to each individual’s frame of reference – he or she only sees the data for areas where they can make an impact. They get the data they need… and ONLY the data they need.

Here’s the RBAC framework for DreamCORE Dashboards:

Examples of Role-Based Access Control

Culinary Manager – Sees payroll, overtime, and department budget adjusted daily per fluctuating census only for the facility’s culinary department

Director of Nursing – Sees payroll, overtime, and department budget adjusted daily per fluctuating census only for the facility’s nursing department. Plus, she sees a daily tracking of her CMS PBJ star rating – data only relevant to her role.

Facility Administrator – Sees all the data relevant to that specific property/location.

Regional Director – Sees all the data for the facilities he oversees.

Executive Team – All the data for all the facilities, as well as corporate financials, P&L, forecasts, Payroll Analysis, and more.

As a result, sensitive data remains secure, and each individual is aware that their focus is different from another within the company. Yet DreamCORE Dashboards provide one version of the truth, updated daily.

Two individuals in different roles, but who have access to the same dashboard page are both seeing the same data. For example, a regional director has a virtual meeting with a facility administrator. They are both seeing that facility’s “green data” – one version of the truth, updated daily.

Benefits of RBAC in DreamCORE Dashboards

Protects sensitive payroll data. Most department leaders need to control schedules and overtime expense, yet need to keep wage rates secure. DreamCORE Dashboards provides that security while allowing leaders to make data-driven decisions.
Protects patient data. DreamCORE Dashboards focus on the financial data of a patient’s stay and it’s only available to certain roles, as defined by executive leadership.
Eliminates data overload at the front line. Narrowing the focus is the first step towards positive outcomes – DreamCORE Dashboards are a tool for front line success.
Ease of change. Individuals’ roles change – whether they are adding responsibilities, moving to a different facility, or getting a promotion, changing access is as easy as contacting our support team.

Learn more about Prone 2 Dream’s Role-Based Security.

The Ease of Single Sign-on

Nobody needs yet another set of login credentials to gain access to their data. Prone 2 Dream is a Microsoft Partner, so with your current Microsoft account, your team simply logs in to their email account and access to their dashboards is a click away.

Our single sign-on feature mitigates the risk in accessing third-party sites, reduces time spent accessing multiple accounts, lowers the total cost of ownership of IT with fewer help desk / support ticket requests, and creates happy users.

Empower your front line leaders

Data drives decisions. If your facilities are wading in data overload or simply don’t have the time to shuffle through their various papers and platforms, book a demo of DreamCORE Dashboards today.

We understand that data can be intimidating, especially to department managers who were hired for their acumen in distinctly different areas. We take pride in providing onboarding and training for your teams and helping them learn to love their numbers.

SNF Operators – Are your financial projections data-driven?

by Leona Fink | Apr 11, 2021 | Business Intelligence, Financial Dashboards

What if you had a tool to capture Midnight Census and make daily PPD calculations for you?

We have that tool – DreamCORE Dashboards. DreamCORE provides unobstructed visibility into KPIs, helping SNF leaders quickly identify obstacles on the road to profitability.

DreamCORE gives insight into Payer Mix, projects revenue, adjusts budgeted expenses for SpendDown, and calculates current HPPD.

If this sounds like it would save you lots of time, you’re right.

Check out the benefits of the Census feature in DreamCORE Dashboards in the infographic below.

Book a live demo – Grab a spot on our calendar here.

Revenue and Roadblocks: Right Now on the Right Route

by Leona Fink | Jan 19, 2021 | Business Intelligence, Financial Dashboards, P&L Strategy

You use many software platforms to run your business, and each offers a dynamic set of metrics.

What if you had a way to see how those metrics affect each other? A way to align them – showing the best route to your destination (profitability) and alert you to roadblocks in your path?

In our last article, Business Detours? Not A Problem When You Set Your GPS, we described how business intelligence and predictive analytics form a GPS to help frontline managers navigate the financial side of your company.

Enter a GPS solution called DreamCORE Dashboards – CORE is an acronym for the controllable parts of your business: Census* | Overtime | Receivables | Expenses.

*This model was built for the skilled nursing industry but is applicable anywhere –C is your Customers or Clients, your revenue source.

Let’s take a closer look at Census, and how you can use this fluctuating element to improve both customer satisfaction and your profitability.

Census – The Lives We Care For

Census is the lives we care for within our skilled nursing facilities. Our clinical teams treat and care for the individuals entrusted to us, ensuring the right solutions to help heal in the best way, in the best atmosphere.

Financially, census drives the revenue. We need to capitalize on every dollar of revenue to support the mission of care – nursing supplies, dietary sustenance, entertainment, housekeeping, administration.

The industry has worked out multiple algorithms to ensure the best journey of the revenue dollar to the table– through a labyrinth of documentation, carve outs, comorbidities coding, and specifications that vary widely by payers.

What success have we had managing “the dollars on the table”?

Managing Expenses against Fluctuating Revenue

Staying true to the GPS theme, finance develops a roadmap yearly, the “budget”. It is well thought out, achievable, and precise. The day after it is published, the path to success begins to deteriorate. Road conditions are constantly changing (lower than expected census), unexpected detours (transmission on your van konks out), inevitably you must stop, take time to get a true sense of where you are on the map, and recalculate your path to the destination.

DreamCORE is constantly recalculating to support your goals – by providing you the pinpoint on the map of where you are at any given time, and where you need to go to stay on course to your destination.

For example, your dietary manager was budgeted $35,263 for Raw Food for May–pinned to his corkboard–this budget was calculated last October and was based on a census budget of $8.26 PPD. The actual census for May is averaging $9.75 PPD. If the dietary manager spends the original budget of $35,263, DreamCORE gives clear sight to the overspend of $7,778. The thermometer shows current spend against scaled budget – making it much easier to adjust spending to meet current census level.

A significant ROI of DreamCORE is based in the automatic adjustment of the budgets.

In the example above, the dietary manager’s expense dashboard would show the budget for his department is $26.747. And daily the “Expected Budget” would be adjusted by the Average Daily Census in the background. Additionally, with each invoice entered into DreamCORE, the budget balance would be reduced, like a checkbook, keeping the whole department informed of their current balance, helping them not to “overdraw” the account.

So being able to see the financial picture at a quick glance enables small changes, which over time make a big impact.

This automation keeps the patient at the center – each operational department is rotating around the patient, spending what is necessary to create the healing experience. Your teams are working with their patients, not sitting at desks looking at numbers. They’re solving people problems to create the best customer experience.

On the Journey to success

Consider you’re on the road to your destination and your GPS tells you there’s an accident ahead, you should exit now to the alternate route. You choose to disregard GPS and within a few minutes you’re at a dead standstill. Half an hour later, you pass the accident, but you’ve lost 30 minutes. Even speeding at this point won’t get you to the destination on time. A small change to the alternate route may have made the difference.

DreamCORE provides clear analytics to help you and your teams pinpoint their exact location, adjust for what is ahead, and equipping you to stay on course to the destination.

Getting your people to love their numbers

What if each of your department leaders were taught how to use a financial GPS to make the right decisions for their department?

Look at the flip side: “You don’t know what you don’t know”–When they don’t understand where they are or where to go, they’re on a path to fail. Nobody hires on to fail! They want to do well – to succeed at their jobs means they meet expectations.

DreamCORE encourages camaraderie – when all the departments are working harmoniously, they start to see how they can help each other toward the greater good. One department has an unexpected capital expense, the rest can tighten their belts a bit to balance that out.

As an operator, you want to be competitive. You want to hire the best person to run each of your departments. So you hire a great culinary talent to run dietary, but he’s probably not an MBA. He can easily be taught to read DreamCORE, understand the expectation, and DreamCORE can free his time to be where he needs to be – providing a great customer experience.

Your department leaders know their priority is the best customer experience. When they know where they are financially, they make the best decisions. They’ll make the best decision for the company every time because they want to feel good about their work. They want to succeed. And you know that successful teams reduce turnover and build great culture.

Teaching them how to read a quick DreamCORE view of their department can set them up to succeed, which leads to managing the dollars already on the table.

Give them a clear solution to feed that success.

Book a live demo – Grab a spot on our calendar here.

How to Use Predictive Analytics to Improve Skilled Nursing Profitability

by Leona Fink | Oct 19, 2020 | Financial Dashboards, Skilled Nursing Industry

While predictive analytics strategy is imperative for all industries, skilled nursing has been impacted by Covid-19 to a dramatic degree. The exposure to analytics and the power to aggregate and analyze data in contact tracing, incident reporting, and statistical monitoring has delivered a new normal for the industry. Yet, the wealth of data already being generated throughout healthcare has never been leveraged to serve nursing homes for better operational efficiency.

What is “Predictive Analytics”?

Predictive analytics is the power to assemble data in a relevant way so that it tells a historical story, and based on that story and its continuing trends, can predict outcomes.

Integrating data silos combines data from different platforms and indicates business issues and business opportunities.

Take the case of a dietary manager in a skilled nursing facility. His top skills may be culinary mastery and managing a team of people. He’s given the tools to order his supplies – food, cleaning, disposables, etc. He’s given a budget based on expected census, (in many cases this can be a flat dollar amount that was projected nearly 6 months ago by the financial division). Coupled with multiple other platforms to manage his staffing needs, recipes, dietary guidelines…etc., he can become quite overwhelmed with the “systems” and may struggle with how to fit it all together for success.

A simple strategy to predict outcomes based on departmental data – employees, purchases, and the residents – empowers department managers to “control the controllable”.

Bringing all of his disparate data together with a business intelligence strategy will give him back control of the department’s success. Simply delivering an auto-adjusted budget based on the facility’s actual census as it fluctuates throughout the month, coupled with a declining budget, he will be able to discern his direction and feel empowered to meet the goals. Why is this important? If census goes down, he is delivered the adjusted budget dollars and declining balance for purchases through the month ensuring expenses are controlled. Likewise, if census increases, adjusted budget dollars increase, and orders adjusted for enough supplies to be certain he is taking excellent care of his customers. Without predictive analytics, his orders may be “his best guess” on needs and may fall short of budget expectations and stress his department’s commitment to excellence.

Employing this simple business intelligence strategy across all of your department heads will empower the facility to meet budget expectations.

All of your Department Managers want to succeed. With predictive analytics, auto adjusting budget dollars and “declining balance” can give them confidence to meet spending expectations.

What else can predictive analytics be used for?

Skilled nursing operators have a wealth of data that can be used to make course adjustments and get back on track to reach goals. Data gives you a historical view of “what happened” and “what’s happening right now”.

Predictive analytics identifies trends, alerts for problems, and offers opportunities to put data to use and strengthen favorable outcomes.

Our predictive analytics strategies can be applied to PBJ, census, cash flow, and accounts receivable, and many more.

Making sense of too much data

How many software platforms does it take to run a skilled nursing facility? Census/EHR, Payroll, Scheduling & PBJ, Culinary, Financial, … the list goes on. The result? Information overload. Yet, smart operators are taking these data silos and integrating them for their best benefit. By doing so, they are turning information overload into business opportunity. Prone 2 Dream Technologies has developed CORE – a business intelligence strategy that joins together your disparate data silos into a relevant order. Your data aggregated in one place —custom dashboards – where you have real time access to all the factors affecting your profitability. CORE gives you the ability to view fresh data on a daily basis – you can drill down into your daily activities and find the insights you need for actionable decisions – in minutes. You are able to monitor controllable expenses before they affect your bottom line. With CORE, you have the visibility to evaluate the course, identify direct influencers and evaluate course corrections as the data builds bringing stability to your profit margin.

How to apply a predictive analytics strategy

The key is consultation with our seasoned analyst who can assess your data stores – The why? The how did we get here? The what needs to change for us to reach our goal? Once your history has been evaluated and the goals identified, Prone 2 Dream Technologies can apply a predictive analytics strategy over that data. This includes integrating your data platforms into a centralized location, keeping them refreshed, where critical KPIs can be at your fingertips. Sound complicated? It’s not.

Prone 2 Dream sets you up for success with onboarding, ongoing training and unlimited support for your executive team and front-line managers.

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