What's a CFO to do?

Although the content of this post is related to the healthcare industry, it's really applicable across all industries (All you need to do is substitute, for the italicized healthcare-specific issues throughout this post, those issues of major impact your industry is facing now and in the future).

Bob Dylan was, in fact, prophetic: "The times, they are a’changin’". And, yes, the issue of wrestling with rampant change is popping up in every professional journal and newsletter. What with healthcare reform, integrated electronic health records, depressed investment dollars, pressures on cost containment, pressures on physician income, quality metrics…well, you get the idea.

I maintain the question is less “How do we address the multitude of critical issues concurrently?” than “How do we know where we’re starting from? How can we can identify our most critical issues, prioritize and aggressively seek solutions, in the midst of so much pressure and confusion?”

The future viability of your organization will likely hinge upon the following seven imperatives (among others):

• Focusing on quality initiatives, measures and outcome reporting 
• Strengthening and internalizing a compliance culture
• Identifying opportunities to maximize revenue, streamline costs and manage cash
• Developing and reporting key metrics tied to organizational goals
• Developing and implementing an electronic health record system
• Finding ways to partner with and bond physicians to your organization
• Enhancing product line accounting, to facilitate decision making and identify strategic opportunities

But here’s the rub: You’ve got to walk before you can run. You need to ensure every basic control and process in support of your higher goals is in place.

How Do I Start?

I’m sure you're functioning as an effective strategic partner with the rest of the C-suite team. Taking that as a given, you will find it productive, as a starting point, to lead the effort of developing a comprehensive set of the basic requirements or "best practices", categorized by area of risk or opportunity and by function, that are the underpinning of a strong organization.
My next post will walk through the manner in which you might work within your organization to get such a project off the ground in an effective, collaborative way. A subsequent post will describe one model that can be used to put the concepts into practice.

Meanwhile, let me know what you think of this as an approach to developing an effective starting point, before digging in to conflicting priorities?