Black Book™ 2019 CFO Reveals Value-Based Care, Profitability and Consumerism Demand a New Breed of Financial Technology Leadership

TAMPA, Fla., June 7, 2019 (Newswire.com) - ​​Black Book™ surveyed nearly 1,600 hospital and health system Chief Financial Officers, Vice Presidents of Finance and RCM, Controllers, Business Office Managers, Staff, Consultants and Directors to spot trends, collect insights and assess the gaps and urgencies of financial technology administration.

According to the study results, over the next decade, health system finance will have to disrupt itself to meet the demands of consumers, patients, regulators, boards, marketing chiefs, IT divisions, auditors and internal stakeholders to serve as a true business partner, not the back office focused on billing, payment transactions, insurance and historical reporting.

“The CFO’s role in managing technology decisions across the health system is shifting the role to requiring an updated set of technical skills confirming the assumption that technology responsibilities will be a primary part of the job descriptions of healthcare financial leaders,” said Doug Brown, President of Black Book. “Financial managers must have a strong technical background and CFOs will require the data science skills that currently fall under the health system CIO.”

Health system CFOs responsibilities (related to technology) in 2019 as reported from the pool of 200 chief financial officers:

Technology purchase influencer, Non-Finance Areas of Health System 66%

Technology purchase influencer, Finance Areas 97%

Uses Data analytics to Inform Technology Strategy for the Health System 44%

Direct Involvement in managing Finance Department Technology 80%

Responsible for Performance Risk Metrics 90%

Responsible for Risk Associated with Health System IT Decisions 98%

Manages IT Investment Budget 44%

Other Findings include:

83% of Financial leaders rate Big Data and advanced Analytics as the biggest potential disrupters to their current workflows and operations.

92% say their healthcare organization is taking an active role in addressing technology and analytics-fueled disruption.

96% of finance leaders see a need to develop future or exiting talent in the face of advanced financial technology and analytics.

Few healthcare financial organizations have digitized more than 25 percent of their transactional work despite respondents confirming that highly digitalized health system financial divisions report notable returns, as compared to less technical hospital finance departments.

Percentage of hospitals finance work that has been fully digitized or automated since 2017 Black Book CFO Survey

50 Percent or More             8%

26 to 49 Percent                 12%

1 to 25 Percent                   48%

None or Close to None      30%

Return-on-Investment generated from finance organizations’ digitalization and automation since 2017 among hospitals digitizing more that 25 percent of their financial processes.

Substantial      86%

Minimal           3%

None                0%

“The top concern for almost every healthcare leader including CFOs is cost control through better data and analytics, and the role of health systems CFOs has progressed far from the traditional accounting, reporting and compliance focus to technology, strategy, innovation and consumer experience,“ states Brown.

About Black Book

Black Book™ has polls for vendor satisfaction and industry trends across the healthcare software/technology and outsourcing sectors around the globe. Since 2009, Black Book began polling the client experience of now over 840,000 healthcare software and services users. Black Book expanded its survey prowess and reputation of independent, unbiased crowd-sourced surveying to IT, clinical, operations and financial professionals, physician practice administrators, nurses, consultants, executives and hospital information technology managers.

For methodology, auditing, resources, comprehensive research and vendor ranking data, see http://www.blackbookmarketresearch.com or contact us at [email protected].

Results of the 2019 Revenue Cycle Management software and managed services user surveys will be announced in August. The annual Black Book CFO & Senior Finance Leadership Report can be viewed at https://tinyurl.com/yxgwmvem

Source: Black Book Research