Updated: Strategic financial and operational planning is crucial for providers now more than ever

23 June 2020

Aged Care providers can prepare for and excel in the face of challenges such as COVID-19 and the Royal Commission with efficient and effective budgeting, planning and forecasting practices.

This guest post has been supplied by Rohling International and Workday.

The Aged Care sector is facing an unprecedented struggle as it’s being hit with multiple large-scale challenges in rapid succession, leaving providers reeling under the immense pressure to quickly pivot and change their business plans and strategic forecasts to keep up.

COVID-19, the Royal Commission, and funding model and legislation amendments have amplified the changes that providers have to cater for and get ahead of, meaning that improving budgeting, planning and forecasting processes to become more responsive and agile to changing situations is paramount to improving and maintaining the quality of care to residents and commercial sustainability in the short-, medium- and long-term.

Providers are facing significant challenges due to problems like the COVID-19 crisis, and the outcomes anticipated from the Royal Commission, where rapid changes can impact business operations, impacting service delivery and profitability. Lack of adequate planning processes to anticipate and combat these challenges put key areas at risk, including care staff portfolio management, facility RAD and bond portfolio management, revenue assurance, and operational expense control.

Rohling International has developed Aged Care revenue, labour, expense and cash-flow (RAD) accelerators, which enable rapid ‘what if’ scenario planning and reforecasting down to highly granular levels to account for unexpected business changes efficiently, effectively, and on-demand.

These accelerators enable Aged Care providers to proactively manage care staffing portfolios more efficiently and effectively, increasing quality of care and reducing expense. With emergencies such as COVID-19 comes challenges in managing care staffing models, which can increase commercial costs for providers – PPE, compliance costs, sick leave, occupancy changes, lockdowns – and decrease quality of care due to rostering issues, lack of care staff availability, and lag for hiring, onboarding and training new staff.

Using the Workday Adaptive Planning platform, the Rohling International Aged Care Labour and Expense Accelerators helps providers with their current and future planning, care roster planning, bridges the gap between management and facility staff in terms of communication and visibility, and ensures that residents are receiving the right level of care. Providers’ rostering systems can be seamlessly integrated with Rohling International’s accelerators within Workday Adaptive Planning platform, ensuring that providers have an easily accessible single source of information to both plan and report.

Facility RAD and bond portfolios are also impacted by crises such as COVID-19, where growth opportunities become limited while cash-flow and accommodation income stall, putting pressure on providers to look at alternate funding arrangements. Additionally, necessary fast-paced changes can interfere with ensuring all revenue entitlements, including ACFI, are claimed by the provider, which results in income leakage. The Rohling International Aged Care Revenue and Cash-Flow Accelerators improve commercial operations, ensuring high quality care resident outcomes can be met.

Learn more about how Rohling International and Workday can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of budget, planning and forecasting practices to account for unprecedented and changing situations in their upcoming webinar, where Aged Care revenue, labour, expense and cash-flow (RAD) accelerators will be explained and demonstrated live. REGISTER HERE