Aug 15 / Sue Hanen

Two Questions to Ask Your Financial Coordinator

A two-minute test that shows whether your numbers are built on a solid foundation.

You trained your Financial Coordinator on where to click. Did anyone train them on what those clicks mean?
The TC gets the family to yes. From there, the FC takes over: entering the contract, posting payments, tracking balances, and working AR. Quiet work, and easy to assume it runs fine. It often does not, and the damage stays hidden until the reports come due.

Here is a quick test. Ask your FC these two questions today.

1. What is AR, and why does it matter?
Strong answer: AR means accounts receivable; the money owed to the practice by patients and insurance. Unmanaged AR ties up cash flow and could hide overdue follow-ups.

2. Name the two types of adjustments and how each one moves your numbers.
Strong answer: Production adjustments, like discounts or write-offs, lower the patient balance and reduce AR. Collection adjustments, like an NSF or a payment posted in error, change what you record as money received. Enter the wrong adjustment, and your production and collection reports stay wrong for the month, the quarter, and the year.

If your FC hesitates on either question, you have found a gap. Not a work ethic gap. A training gap.

The damage you do not see
The FC’s mistakes do not announce themselves. A weak sales conversation is obvious in the moment. A miscoded adjustment is not. It sits in the system, clean on the surface, while your production and collection numbers drift away from reality. Those same numbers feed the reports you review to evaluate growth and make business decisions. If the data is wrong, decisions are made on false data.
When the FC learns the software but not the meaning behind it, the gaps repeat:
  • Contracts entered incorrectly
  • Adjustments posted without review
  • Collection issues coded as production, or the reverse
  • Delinquent accounts caught too late
  • Account notes too thin to follow
  • AR nobody clearly owns
  • Reports read without understanding what they show

Most of this traces back to one thing. Software shows where to click. It does not teach your FC to read AR, set up a contract correctly, document an adjustment, or know which entry protects the report and which one breaks it. The software is a tool. Training builds the judgment behind the tool.
What a well-trained FC protects
A well-trained FC keeps contracts accurate, posts adjustments correctly the first time, tracks account balances with consistency, follows up on AR before it ages out, and protects the validity of the reports you rely on. When you sit down to evaluate growth, plan, or make a business decision, the data must be right. The FC is who keeps it that way.

Financial Coordinator 101 Package
Give new and cross-trained team members a structured foundation, so they understand what they are doing, why it matters, and how their work protects cash flow, AR, contracts, and reporting across the practice.
Ask your FC the two questions. The answers will tell you whether your foundation is solid or whether it is time to build one.


And one more thing, for you...
If those two questions gave you pause, you are in good company. Plenty of doctors trust their FC with the whole financial picture and have never had a reason to dig into AR or adjustment types. No judgment here. Still, the numbers run your practice and knowing the why behind them puts you and your FC on the same page. The Financial Coordinator 101 Package lays it out in plain language, in short modules you can finish whenever you have a few minutes. Log in, look around, and pick up the same foundation you want for your team. Reading your own reports with full confidence feels pretty great.