The alternative to cash

The nursing and care homes & home care sector employs nurses and carers who consciously choose this profession. Their task and goal is clear: to provide the best possible care to clients. Different departments in a care facility try to facilitate the caregivers in this.
For instance, the finance department has an important, supportive role to ensure they spend as little time as possible on unnecessary administration. This includes manually accounting for necessary expenses for teams and clients, such as trips and shopping. Read how to implement a secure altenative to cash here.

Spending under control with cash alternative

Industry association V&V research shows that care staff experience workload and stress due to unnecessary administrative work, including accounting for purchases made for the site, department, team or client, among other things.
These purchases obviously need to be accounted for to the finance department so that it can keep a grip and an overview of the outgoing cash flows and process them correctly in the accounts.
Healthcare institutions work with numerous teams that differ in their methods and size. Each team is given a monthly budget for necessary expenses, which in many cases are still done with cash, using the small cash on the ward or site.

Payment card instead of cash

Care homes that work with cash fill the petty cash with money provided by the finance department. Every month, the department head or team leader collects an envelope of cash.
If the need arises, extra money can always be collected or caregivers advance the money themselves. Credit cards are also used.
It is up to the team leader to create an overview of all these expenses, made by different types of payment methods. The money is used for attentions for staff, as well as food for clients and outings.
Ideally, employees would like to go out with a debit card that works in the same way as their own bank card, but with less administrative burden than using cash, such as keeping track of purchases in a cash book.
So what is a safe alternative to cash?

Demand for clear accountability

Every payment a healthcare provider makes must be accounted for with the correct voucher and cost centre. This is sometimes done in a makeshift cash book.
Many care staff are not administratively trained and find it difficult to keep records in addition to their care duties. As a result, the finance department has to manually enter different types of statements and receipts every month. In addition, they only see where the money has gone after a month.
More and more healthcare institutions' finance departments are being tasked by management to find an alternative to cash. The first step towards a cashless organisation. Counting, managing and storing cash requires a lot of time and trust. Cash obscures and delays visibility of business expenses, both at team level and at the end of the month in the finance department.
Many care workers also find it uncomfortable to carry cash in their pockets, advance amounts privately and keep records of that and have to wait for the refund.

Self-directed teams in healthcare

There are healthcare institutions that work with self-managing teams.
In a nutshell, self-managing teams consist of care providers who shape their working methods themselves, share responsibility as tasks overlap, manage budget expenditures and ultimately save on costs by making some operational management redundant.
Because these teams organise and organise their daily work independently, this also calls for a solution that matches this. Self-managing teams work best when they have the freedom to make expenses, within the rules of the healthcare institution, and can justify them quickly and simply so that the financial administration only has to check and approve the expenses.

Total solution: alternative to contact money

Developers of only claims software offer only part of the solution. Because many expenses that fall outside the team budget must then still be advanced and settled privately. Furthermore, there are still surprises afterwards because hoarded receipts surface and there is no real-time visibility.
Not surprisingly, the largest healthcare institutions use a total solution consisting of bank-independent prepaid debit cards and the corresponding mobile app. For example, when a carton of milk is bought with this debit card, it asks to take a picture of the receipt, enter cost centre and send it to the finance department.
All transactions and receipts are automatically linked and can be viewed online in real time by both the team, the team leader and the finance department. In case of emergency, the finance department can transfer money to the card in real time.
In case of doubt or concern, the financial administration can intervene immediately.
Choose an alternative to cash now. SimpledCard is happy to think with you about a total solution within your healthcare institution. Request a short online demo and see for yourself why major healthcare institutions choose SimpledCard or call +31 20 - 4200 287 for further information.