Breaking From Traditional Healthcare Budgeting During Modern Times

As the pandemic has underscored, healthcare is not static. Providers must be able to adapt to emerging and oftentimes complex changes in healthcare, like value-based care, competition from new players in the market, or even a global pandemic.

For these reasons, more hospitals and health systems are breaking tradition by implementing rolling forecasts.

Rolling forecasts use historical data to predict future performance over a continuous period of time and are updated regularly throughout the year to inform the next period of time. And for health systems like John Muir Health in California, the more dynamic healthcare budgeting and forecasting model is creating more realistic and achievable financial goals.

Providers are certainly no longer practicing under normal circumstances, but even without an ongoing pandemic, this top-down approach to crafting a budget takes away precious resources from patient care.