Healthcare organizations must contend with many challenges in recent years, from talent shortages and supply chain disruptions to margin pressure and economic uncertainty. Thankfully, modern technology allows healthcare organizations to adapt and thrive in these complex and increasingly fluid situations.
Elizabeth (Beth) Allen, VP of Strategic Finance and Analytics at VCU Health, joins Crowd Wars founder and Acceleration Economy co-founder Bob Evans as her team uses Workday. and how they have overcome some of the most persistent challenges in healthcare. sector.
Give healthcare workers space to focus on the tasks they are trained to do
Bob started the discussion by asking Beth about her perspective on the current healthcare environment and how it impacted her priorities at VCU Health.
“VCU is like many academic health systems across the country,” Beth replied. “We are now under tremendous pressure from the top line not only on our cost structure but also on our bottom line as the hiring of contract workers is going through the roof. And it’s easy to adjust.”
“VCU Health has always strived to stay focused on our core mission of serving Virginia. “I’ve been working hard,” she continued.
To weather this storm, Beth and her team have deployed a suite of technology solutions, including Workday. One of the key benefits of embedding Workday into your organization is the platform’s ability to offload non-medical tasks from your clinical staff.
“Nurses (and doctors) entered the healthcare industry to serve patients. We want to minimize some of the work,” said Beth. “We are working on new systems that we have put in place to minimize some of these efforts.”
Integrating Systems for Better Results: An Integrated Platform
Beth explained how the need to optimize HCM, financial and supply chain systems led the VCU Health team to Workday and where the organization was headed with the tool.
“We thought through what we wanted VCU Health to look like in the future and looked at what we had at the time. We had 20 different systems,” she said. “We had different systems for payroll processing and HR. We had different systems for supply chains and connections and integrations. .”
“When we looked at Workday, we really appreciated that it was a single system that worked together. ,” continued Beth.
“One of our biggest successes with Workday is payroll processing. There was anxiety about not being able to pay salaries to those involved,” Beth said. “There’s only a day and a half left. We always hit our deadlines, but we don’t have a plan B, C, D if something goes wrong with the system. So it was a big win for us organizationally.”
Workday has also made an impact across the company, making data more accessible to staff. “We’re working hard to bring that self-service model into the system,” says Beth. “It wasn’t until Workday came along, and it became a cultural shift for us moving forward.”
“Having information readily available and easier for people to do their jobs will be a big change for organizations, but we feel progress as we move forward.”
Impact of Workday AI/ML
Workday has been a leader in AI and ML for several years. Bob asked Beth to explain the impact of these technologies on her VCU Health.
“We continue to see opportunities to do more with AI and machine learning,” says Beth. “We are looking to do more with Journal Insights within Workday. How can we automate month-end closing? so you don’t have to spend time analyzing it?”
The VCU Health team is focused on leveraging Workday’s AI and ML capabilities to automate some of the manual work processes in place and streamline access to critical data. “We’re talking about dashboards, how can we go to the office, open the system and have the information right away without having to look for it?”
