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Best Practices in Financial Management: What Data Should I Be Collecting?

The healthcare industry faces the challenge to provide higher quality care to an increasing volume of citizens while operating in an uncertain reimbursement climate. Leaders scrutinize every dollar spent to assure delivery of full value and are constantly seeking increased value over time. As a result, effective fiscal management is essential for the food and nutrition operations to succeed.

A common question AHF Benchmarking Committee receives is what data should I be collecting? AHF has just the tool to help you with this question but also your financial understanding of expert food and nutrition management. AHF’s Best Practices in Financial Management was revised in 2021 and is available for downloading from the members section on the AHF website.

On page 12 of this helpful tool is a listing of Tools/Techniques for Data Gathering, Tracking and Reporting. By collecting this data daily, weekly, monthly, and by using AHF’s Benchmarking tools, you can easily turn your data into reports for your team and administration. These reports should be used for monthly reporting to keep administrators update.

A desktop dashboard is a terrific way to keep up with your data. Members use a variety of methods to capture their data but most use Google docs, SharePoint site or Excel spreadsheets to capture information that is critical to your daily operation.

DAILY STATS:

• Adjusted Patient Days
• Patient Meals per Patient Day
• Non-productive Labor Hours
• Overtime
• Infections and contact precautions
• Incident Reports

WEEKLY STATS:

• Test Tray Review
• Food Waste Review in the dish room

MONTHLY:

• Total Operating Expense per Adjusted Patient Day (net of cash)
• Patient Satisfaction Rate
• Meals per labor hour or per productive labor hour
• Floor Stock Cost per Patient Day
• Retail Sales by Revenue Center
• Supply Cost per Cost Center
• Paid Revenue as a % of Total Managed Volume
• Productive Hours per 100 Meals
• Staff turnover and Reason for Turnover

QUARTERLY:

• GPO Contract Utilization Rate Yearly
• Inventory Turns
• Colleagues per Leader
• Position Vacancy Rate
• Associate Turn-over Rate

If you have any questions about benchmarking, please reach out to the AHF Benchmarking Committee. We have operators and business partners that are available to assist you not only with data collection but interpretation of your data. With AHF’s benchmarking tool, you receive your results immediately and can benchmark against your past performance but also with like-sized entities.