February 2021
CostFlex Newsletter
Yardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama

Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler
Happy Yardi Gras
Even though COVID has cancelled Mardi Gras parades, residents in Mobile, Alabama have started decorating the neighborhoods for drive-through "Yardi Gras" viewing.

Read more about Yardi Gras:
Hospital Cost Accounting as a Service
It is rare to find a healthcare finance professional that does not hold the value of accurate cost accounting data in high regard for important analysis. However, having the manpower and/or IT server infrastructure is not always in place for many hospital and clinic organizations providing patient care in this decade.

CostFlex has seen this problem more often than ever before and has now created a unique and proprietary service to help those organizations that are in this position and also need cost accounting and service line data.

The CostFlex “Costing as a Service” has been created and released to the market for the first quarter of 2021 and is already receiving positive praise for its simplicity, accuracy and received benefits.

Essentially, an organization can simply subscribe to this CostFlex service that will provide loading files each month, maintaining of the organization’s cost accounting data/direct variables, generating service line reporting, populating dashboard trend visualizations, and much more – all for a single monthly fee with no onsite software or staffing needed!

Please do not hesitate to contact CostFlex Systems for a demonstration of the received reporting today.
VIRTUAL User Group Conference April 26th –30th 2021!
From the recent poll of CostFlex clients, over 80% stated that they would not be able to attend the in-person CostFlex User Group Conference this year in April due to ongoing COVID travel bans and requested that we host the User Group Conference virtually.

Although we will all truly miss the camaraderie and the white sandy beaches of Fort Walton Beach, we are focused on giving our clients (you) what they want and need; therefore, the 2021 CostFlex User Group Conference will be held as Virtual events the week of April 26-30, 2021.

The webinar agenda is currently being finalized and registration links will be released soon for this new Virtual format. In addition, similar to in-person events, we are anticipating approval of accounting and auditing CPE credits by the Alabama State Board of Public Accountancy.

Be sure to watch your inbox for registration and CPE credit information!
Price Transparency Solution
As most healthcare finance professionals are aware, the Hospital Price Transparency rule in healthcare is now in effect as of January 1, 2021. To assist our client family, CostFlex developed a solution that utilizes a combination of our existing Payer Contract Analyzer software module and newly developed tools. Since the January start date, a third party auditing company is vetting our solution (since the law requires the transparency data to be available to the public, this is being done on many vendor solutions currently) and, we are completing any suggested updates that are being shared to continually insure that our solution is fully compliant according to the guidelines in place for our clients.

With our clients using many different approaches, some have started the year with a certain direction other than the CostFlex tools, and have not been satisfied with the results. Now these clients have contacted us with requests for assistance in getting on a compliant path for their organization.

To summarize what is necessary to utilize the CostFlex solution for Transparency, an organization would first implement the CostFlex Payer Contracts Analyzer module. Next, the client organization would then use this tool set to classify their shoppable services and calculate the actual ‘allowed amount’ for all payers and services involved. Finally, they would then use the built in Transparency reporting to publish the required data to a public location – either hosted by the client or through a low-cost hosting offered through CostFlex Systems.
Hospital to Hospital, Cost-Based Benchmarking
Released in 2020 for all CostFlex Total Cost Accounting client organizations, the CostFlex Cost-Based Hospital Benchmarking is now in full swing with millions of comparable data points for our clients in 2021!

In an effort to create a necessary database with hospitals of all types and sizes, we had offered this amazing tool set to our existing clients at zero cost to their organizations!

The good news is that we are currently extending this free use of the tool set for the first quarter of 2021 for those that have not signed up yet.

The B.I. (Business Intelligence) platform that CostFlex utilizes allows client organizations to quickly organize and report on massive amounts of cost comparison data from hospitals across the USA.

The professional software development team at CostFlex has programmed the export reporting into your existing Total Cost Accounting tools to make the participation in this unique and powerful product amazingly easy.

Please don’t hesitate to contact a CostFlex Support Representative today to schedule a live demonstration for your team!
Costing Restudies – Restoring Your Cost Data Accuracy
If maintaining your CostFlex Monthly Procedure Level Costing module is being done correctly, the cost data accuracy is designed to improve with use. However, a loss of staff attention to the process for a variety of reasons can leave management with a feeling of uncertainty in the system accuracy which directly affects the trust and use of the system reporting.

When this occurs, CostFlex Systems offers Cost Accounting Restudy Services – which essentially entails a reinstall of the cost accounting software to include training for a client’s staff at the same time.

Because CostFlex has been installing hospital cost accounting for over three decades, this entire process is considered to be routinely successful. This wealth of experience possessed by the CostFlex staff also allows us to provide these valuable services at a fixed professional rate (not a blank check approach that consulting service companies commonly attempt to contract).

If you are not a CostFlex Total Cost Accounting client but would still like to have a professional engagement to update the cost data of your organization’s cost accounting software, please do not hesitate to request a fixed quote from CostFlex as well. Over the years, CostFlex has assisted with the reinstall/update of cost accounting data for most of the popular cost tools on the market and the CostFlex implementation tools are flexible to provide data in just about any format for those systems yet to be explored.

For more information on this CostFlex service, please contact us today.
(800) 398-5753