How our COVID-19 National Financial Impact Analysis helps contribute to financial security for hospitals
About the collaboration
LOGEX closely collaborated with 20 volunteer hospitals on behalf of the Dutch Hospital Association (Nederlandse Vereniging van Ziekenhuizen, NVZ) to test the financial impact and potential risks of a national COVID-19 compensation agreement that aimed to provide financial security for hospitals amidst the nationwide COVID-19 outbreak.
The challenge
In July 2020, after extensive negotiations, the Dutch Hospital Association (NVZ) and the Association of Health Insurers (Zorgverzekeraars Nederland, ZN) reached a landmark agreement to guarantee financial security for hospitals amidst the national COVID-19 outbreak. To ensure sufficient capacity for COVID-19 care, hospitals deferred regular treatments, which had a significant impact on their earnings. In addition, the national agreement allowed hospitals to cover their fixed costs, aiming to provide financial stability in the healthcare system. Compensation, however, was applied through generic parameters, while the effects of COVID-19 did not equally hit hospitals. In this unprecedented situation with many unknowns, the NVZ approached LOGEX for support in conducting an in-depth financial ‘stress test using a financial P&L forecast among 20 of its member hospitals across the country.
It was vital to test and understand the financial impact of the COVID-19 compensation scheme, its potential sensitivities or risks to make a well-informed decision on an arrangement that aims to provide financial security for the Dutch hospitals.
The solution
Leveraging insights and experience of its Financial Control portfolio, LOGEX worked closely with 20 individual hospitals to develop a detailed P&L Forecast for the remainder of 2020, including the expected effects of the national agreement and various sensitivity analyses.
LOGEX’s deep knowledge of hospital financial control helped the hospitals and the NVZ develop a better understanding of the sensitivities and potential risks or opportunities of the compensation scheme to a level that otherwise would not have been possible within the highly demanding timeframe. Furthermore, partnering with LOGEX allowed the NVZ to focus more on managing the already challenging negotiations, backed by clear and quantified insights.
Financial Control
Our Financial Control suite enables you to gain mastery over patient volumes, resources and finances for the entire organisation, leading to better financial performance—with the numbers to prove it.
We cover the full spectrum of financial and operational processes, from costing and budgeting to forecasting and contracting.
Our activity-based costing model empowers you to:
Simplify cost calculations
Make cost calculations for healthcare providers that are easy to understand, apply, and optimise.
Optimise resource allocation
Allocate resources and costs to patients, care activities and episodes.
Improve through benchmarking
Benchmark unit costs with national and international peers to identify areas for improvement.
Meet regulatory standards
Deliver information to national regulators automatically and in full compliance with National Cost Collection requirements.
Our activity-based budgeting model makes it possible to:
Build and benchmark budgets
Seamlessly link volumes, resources and finances in one budget.
Anticipate and respond to future demand
Match the deployment of resources and manpower to the future demand for care.
Zero in on areas for improvement
Determine how portfolio choices impact operations, and spot areas for improvement.
Involve physicians and managers in budgeting
Bottom-up budgeting functionality facilitates collaboration with non-financial stakeholders.
Our forecasting model enables you to:
Forecast and monitor volume, revenue and cost
Stay on top of expected vs. realised volumes, revenues and costs on a near real-time basis.
Analyse and factor risk into payer contracts
Automate value-at-risk calculations for all contractual agreements with commissioners.
Leverage machine learning algorithms
Build and maintain reliable, easy-to-access forecasts based on machine learning algorithms.
Produce timely, compliant reports with ease
Deliver periodic financial results that are fully compliant with national regulations.
LOGEX’s Financial Solution team was able to:
- Develop a detailed financial forecast in a highly challenging year
- Help analyse, identify and quantify variable elements in the hospital cost base
- Help review and standardise each hospital’s cost base for comparison with 20 hospitals
- Consolidate findings in a management report to the NVZ board with (anonymised) results from the analysis
- Invest significantly for the national interest conducting an extensive analysis for 20 hospitals and consolidating findings in a timeframe of under two months, leveraging the team’s experience as well as LOGEX’s Financial Control platform
LOGEX’s support in conducting the financial stress test (Elandproef) significantly helped concretise discussions between the NVZ and ZN. However, these talks would likely have been severely more challenging without a solid analysis as a base.