Cost containment policies and budget shortfalls strain many organizations, specifically governmental and quasi-governmental agencies, creating difficulties in fiscal management.
In an environment of growing expectations and tight public resources, agencies must practice more effective, accountable use and redistribution of realistically available resources. To do this, administrative and financial management in public agencies must improve dramatically.
Advances in information technology make this improvement possible. ACA has developed inventive solutions that use resources wisely, with a systematic approach to fund, budget, and contract management. Our solutions have been implemented in a variety of contexts: a single program agency, several agencies within one governmental unit, a human services department, a multi-county collaborative, and a group of independent counties.
We promote an approach to improving fiscal management that involves:
- Precisely defining a budget for a given period
- Adjusting budgetary line items as necessary
- Defining the limitations placed on individual budget line items from customers, services, and business partners
- Monitoring expenses from their encumbrance through their commitment.
- Making decisions about resources without imposing tasks unnecessarily on non-fiscal personnel.
- Accounting for all resources available to an organization
Innovative Solutions in Fiscal Management
Our consulting and information technology services have helped our customers improve their fiscal management:
- We guided a multi-county collaborative in financial modeling, capitation rate setting, overseeing a behavioral health managed care organization (MCO), and analyzing financial performance at the operational-level. We continue to manage the collaborative’s financial information for compilations and audits.
- Using our MASTRR™ Solutions products, a county mental health and mental retardation agency performs all of its fiscal management functions, as well as provider contracting, control of encumbrances and incurred liabilities, claims processing, intensive case management, and resource coordination.
- We help a county commissioners association process historic information about behavioral health service delivery and reimbursement. The association then distributes this information to member counties.
- We assisted a group of cooperating counties in establishing their jointly controlled not-for-profit corporation and its administrative and fiscal management support.
- We assisted a group of counties in preparing and analyzing their Medicaid history to support actuarial studies and capitation rate setting.
- We have assessed the administrative and financial capacity of private MCOs.
- Our software helps a public MCO and a county mental retardation agency to adjudicate provider claims for reimbursement and to generate payment vouchers to submit electronically for processing.
Fiscal Complexity in Public Welfare
In the public welfare industry, fiscal functions are particularly complex because of a variety of factors:
- Balancing compassion and fiscal prudence
- Administering entitlement programs that defy common budgeting logic
- Coordinating multiple funding streams, which are ear-marked for particular services, consumer populations, or providers
- Non-uniform guidelines
- Planning “from the base” that necessitates spend-down practices, thus introducing patterns of service delivery and reimbursement that do not reflect covered populations’ actual needs
Human services agencies operate in a business environment, necessitating sound fiscal management. ACA is prepared to serve your agency by improving fiscal functions to meet the demands of a fiscally challenging environment.