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Financial Consolidations for Multi-Entity Healthcare Organizations 4 The Consolidation Process The traditional approach to consolidation, still used by many healthcare organizations, combines old fashioned manual labor, semi-structured processes, and a range of different technologies to bring together data and information. In many healthcare organizations, financial consolidation roughly follows a pa ern that comprises the following four steps. The Consolidation Process The close follows a detailed calendar with target dates for each business unit to close their books and submit results to the corporate accounting group� Many business units (e.g. a particular hospital or specific practice group) need a week or more to close their books, which means the corporate accounting group is unable to start the close until a week or more a er the period-end date� Many corporate accounting teams receive results from each business unit through indirect mechanisms such as spreadsheets or by email. Such a process not only requires extensive manual rework to harmonize the various results, but may also be unprotected and out of compliance with HIPPA. The team must then place the data into consolidated accounts that conform to accounting policies and account grouping structures–a painstaking, labor- intensive process� Some accounting groups set up a consolidation entity inside the financial reporting system to separately house the consolidation and elimination journal entries� However, others rely on a simple spreadsheet for this purpose� Whether it's journal entries or separate columns and/or rows, the intercompany activities and the investment/ equity accounts get eliminated, and the books for any acquisition related balances (e.g. goodwill) adjusted. The consolidated accounts are manipulated into a financial reporting framework. This is o en the beginning of the "last mile of financial reporting". 4 1 2 3