How Health Care Accountants Help Care Organisations Leverage Rapid Growth

In recent years, the UK health and social care sector has been experiencing ongoing change, impacted by myriad factors. These include the pandemic, staff shortages, high demand for professional services, and increased interest in innovative care options, such as telehealth, remote patient monitoring (RPM), and virtual care.

For any medical or healthcare-focused enterprise, this means there may be exceptional scope to grow and expand, whether by offering new services, taking on new patients, providing hybrid private and public care, recruiting new staff, or branching out by acquiring new facilities or absorbing other businesses into a broader group trading structure.

One of the significant business challenges is putting in place the right financial controls to ensure that investors, business managers, and decision-makers have clarity over where and how they can scale, and the long-term effects on revenues, budgets, and income streams—ensuring that plans for growth are sustainable and backed by research, planning, and expertise.

Changing Accountancy Requirements for Health and Care Providers in a Transitional Environment

James Todd & Co’s independent specialist health care accountants work with diverse businesses, including private and public practices and hospitals, care and nursing homes, primary care networks, and independent professionals, such as doctors, GP partners, consultants, specialists, and those working in certain areas, such as dentistry, physiotherapy, or home care.

Across the board, effective financial management is key, with so many moving parts to account for before making any organisational changes. A UK GP, for example, may require assistance when dealing with:

• • Private practice income
  • NHS practice funding
  • Pension tax charges
  • Inventory costs
  • Locum accounts
  • Self-assessment tax returns
  • GP practice accounts

Accountancy professionals focused on the healthcare sector are well-positioned to offer timely, accurate, and relevant guidance and suggestions. We have a comprehensive knowledge of the tax landscape and how this will vary depending on your practice area or the type of care business you run, and whether you provide NHS or local authority services.

Alongside statutory returns, tax management, and day-to-day processes, accomplished healthcare accountants can provide invaluable assistance when making core decisions about expansion, growth, and risk management, maximising compliance, efficiency, and scalability across the board.

Why Consult a Health and Care Accountant Before Proceeding With Organisational Development Plans?

There is little doubt that demand and capacity for rapid growth are there, with enormous increases in the number of people opting to pay for private services, whether because they wish to receive a faster, more personalised service, perceive that a private organisation offers a better standard of care, or because of gaps in provision.

While these shortages vary and are particularly prominent in home care services for older adults and within dentistry, care and nursing homes, there have also been stark shifts in attitudes and demand for private healthcare across the board.

A recent media report noted that:

• • 10% of elective operations are now performed within private hospitals.
  • Revenues from private, insured treatments or procedures hit £4 billion in 2023.
  • 665,000 people, classed as self-payers or insured parties, were treated by private hospitals in the first nine months of last year—a 7% increase year-on-year.
  • The total number of people paying for private treatments is 32% higher than pre-pandemic.

Another study of the dentistry sector found that 33% of people registered with a dentist are private patients and that 23% of all respondents said that they would prefer to pay for private dentistry services if money were not a factor.

For health and care providers, this demonstrates not only a rising demand for private care, but the room to expand into a subsector that can generate long-term growth, provided the foundational preparation is there to ensure growth strategies are stable and focus on longevity rather than short-term profits.

From an accountancy perspective, this could mean reviewing your resources, auditing your staffing and facilities, investigating funding or financing options, appraising any regulatory compliance standards that could be affected by an expansion, and assessing the sustainability of the core revenue streams your business or organisation depends on.

Optimising Financial Management as a Health Services Provider to Support Long-Term Growth

We often talk about efficiency, which may mean addressing several aspects of how you budget, forecast, account for and record types of transactions or services, with a broad-picture approach ideal to identify sticking points or potential risks before moving ahead.

Independent specialist medical accountants working with health and social care clients might make recommendations, depending on how you intend to grow your practice or service, the investment required, the impacts on existing service delivery, and the projected incomes.

Business plans could, for example, impact:

• • Claimable tax allowances and reporting thresholds
  • Tax bands and overall business tax liabilities
  • Mandatory regulatory standards, declarations or reporting

It may be prudent to audit your existing resources, technologies, record-keeping procedures, assets, and inventory. This process enables you to factor in the need to replace older assets, recruit new staff, upgrade your systems or software, or invest more in specific areas to keep delivering current services, while supporting your strategic growth plans.

Preparing for Business Expansions Into Technological Healthcare Services

Health sector organisations looking at adopting virtual, RPM, and telehealth services, may well have the expertise and medical workforce to deliver those services. However, if the business does not have the requisite licensing, insurance, software, or connectivity to be reliable, the costs of improvements should be considered carefully.

Another vital area is cost analysis. If there are existing inefficiencies in your practice or organisation, these need to be identified and corrected before you can safely and sustainably grow the business.

Inefficiencies can lead to higher per-patient costs, unnecessary resource usage, issues in patient care standards, higher-than-necessary staffing or inventory costs, and lower profitability.

By working through all these areas of your financial controls, management, and reporting, you can create a stable, solid base from which the service can grow without embedding inefficiencies into your procedures, which could become more costly and pronounced as the organisation grows.

Please contact the James Todd & Co team at any time to discuss your business requirements, internal controls, and expansion plans or to learn more about how a team of healthcare accountants can assist you.