Community Care Achieves Long-Term Financial Health with Budget Maestro

ABOUT

For more than 35 years nonprofit Community Care, Inc. of Brookfield, Wisconsin has been helping vulnerable elders and adults with disabilities live independently within their communities. A recognized managed care leader, the organization offers a wide range of community-based long-term care and health services programs designed to optimize quality of life for members and maximize the allocation of available community resources. With 1,000 employees made up of doctors, nurses, case managers, rehabilitation specialists, and other operational personnel, Community Care, Inc. is the exclusive organization in Wisconsin to offer each of the three long-term care programs of Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE), Family Care and Partnership.

CHALLENGE

As a nonprofit funded by Medicare and Medicaid, Community Care, Inc. must manage a complex network of providers, caregivers and patients. The organization first implemented an automated budgeting tool in 2004 to help streamline financial activities, but the endeavor failed as the software wasn’t intuitive enough to be used by operations managers. Frustrated, users deployed workarounds that ultimately created too many budget updates with too little accuracy. Further training was met with resistance as it took away time from critical case management activities and the organization’s focus on member care.

The organization resorted back to Excel spreadsheets to manage the budget giving each department responsibility for updating and managing its own worksheet which was then further grouped by functional area. Consolidating all that information manually was grueling and offered no guarantees as to the accuracy of information. As the organization began growing more rapidly, managing the budget by this manner became even more ineffective. When Director of Reimbursement & Financial Planning executive Kyle Raeder joined the company he and Community Care, Inc.’s Chief Financial Officer Lawrence Paplham knew the time had come to evaluate and deploy a more robust budgeting and forecasting tool.

SOLUTION

After a nearly 18 month evaluation process, Community Care, Inc. selected Budget Maestro from Centage.

Raeder and his team of four in the finance department rely on Budget Maestro to deliver the financial insight their nonprofit organization needs. The software’s innate flexibility enables Community Care, Inc. to better manage budget allocation activities, run cash flow projections and instantly create a balance sheet that can be shared with the executive team.

In addition, the software’s drill down capabilities allow Raeder and his team to project staffing costs for their 1,000 employees with greater accuracy. As social security benefits and other government regulations change, Budget Maestro allows them to quickly run projections and determine how evolving expenses will impact to operational budget.

“Budget Maestro is a strategic financial management tool that enables us to improve the budget process every year and fine tune our operations as we go,” noted Raeder. “The clarity of the projections combined with the software’s flexibility enables us to glean the right insight at the right time to help our organization continue its mission of member-centered care and compassion.”

BENEFITS