Kaufman Hall, a leading provider of strategic, capital and financial advisory services and software tools to healthcare organizations, today announced an extended partnership with Columbus Regional Health, a multi-facility healthcare system located in Columbus, Georgia. Columbus Regional Health selected Kaufman Hall’s decision support and cost accounting analytics software solution to help develop and better manage key volume, cost, and profitability measures across clinical service lines, enabling strategic, data-driven decision making across the organization. Additionally, Columbus Regional Health recently elected to upgrade their planning, budgeting and reporting solutions to Kaufman Hall’s enhanced EPM financial management platform.

Columbus Regional Health, a Kaufman Hall client for over 15 years, utilizes the company’s software for strategic financial planning and management, budgeting and reporting. With this latest initiative, they will now benefit from cloud based solutions that integrate planning, cost accounting, and reporting on a single platform. With the addition of Kaufman Hall’s cost accounting solution, Columbus Regional Health will now leverage detailed costing data to improve service line performance reporting across the entire health system and address evolving strategic and financial management needs in a more efficient and timely manner.

“In order to control costs and improve quality, we need valid and reliable procedures for gathering patient-level, activity-based costing data. That has become a significant priority for our organization,” said Allen Butcher, CFO at Columbus. “Kaufman Hall’s cost accounting solution will provide full visibility of costs across the entire organization including payers, providers, and procedures, enabling us to make solid, data-driven decisions – a critical component to staying competitive in today’s cost-conscious healthcare environment.”

Kaufman Hall’s sophisticated cost accounting solution provides the framework Columbus Regional Health needs to perform accurate patient-level costing, and offers flexible decision support functions to evaluate service line performance, develop cost reduction strategies, and analyze and support contract negotiations. With this solution, Columbus Regional Health can now streamline the process of breaking down key service line volumes, costs and profitability down to the patient level with efficient, repeatable methods that ensure timely and accurate reporting of performance analytics across patient populations.

“The cost of care is rapidly increasing, often outpacing reimbursement, which is requiring more rigorous measurement of outcomes and costs. Provider organizations need new tools to ensure long-term sustainability and success,” said James Bodan, Executive VP of Kaufman Hall’s Healthcare Software Division. “We are excited to be working with Columbus Regional Health and are committed to continuing to provide the sophisticated tools it needs to effectively navigate the new demands of value-based healthcare.”