Describe the environmental forces that affect health care organization budgets

GRADING RUBRIC MUST BE FOLLOWED

In 4–5 pages, describe the environmental forces that affect health care organization budgets. Propose a budget that includes organizational improvements. Explain how the budget aligns with the target profit margin and how financial performance will be measured.

Questions to Consider:

• How can internal benchmarks be used to help identify best practices within an organization?
• How might an organization use external benchmarks to measure and monitor performance?
• What is a scorecard, and how is it used to track financial performance?

Required Resources

The following resources are required to complete the assessment.

• Sample Operating Budget [XLSX].

This resource provides step-by-step guidelines for developing a budget, including a multiple-tab spreadsheet for a multi-year generic hospital budget.

• Parkland Hospital. (n.d.). Developing a budget. Retrieved from https://www.parklandhospital.com/phhs/developing-a…

Suggested Resources

The resources provided here are optional and support the assessment. They provide helpful information about the topics. You may use other resources of your choice to prepare for this assessment; however, you will need to ensure that they are appropriate, credible, and valid. MHA-FP5006: Health Care Finance and Reimbursement Library Guide can help direct your research. The Supplemental Resources and Research Resources, both linked from the left navigation menu in your courseroom, provide additional resources to help support you.

This article discusses opportunities for finding savings in the budget process and the need for a multi-year approach and contains helpful links to the American Hospital Association and other resources.

• Becker’s Hospital CFO Report. (2014). CFO perspective: Finding savings in the annual operating budget. Retrieved from https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/cfo-…

Additional Resources for Further Exploration

This article discusses benchmarking and identifying costs.

• Silber, J. H., Rosenbaum, P. R., Ross, R. N., Ludwig, J. M., Wang, W., Niknam, B. A., . . . Fleisher, L. A. (2014). A hospital-specific template for benchmarking its cost and quality. Health Services Research, 49(5), 1475–1497.

This textbook chapter discusses budgets and the process of developing different types of budgets.

Preparation

Use the Sample Operating Budget located in the Required Resources section to help you complete this assessment. The information represents the clinic’s operating budget for 2015 and 2016.

You have been asked to prepare a budget proposal for 2017 for the group of physicians who own the clinic. Because you know the clinic needs new billing software and there is a request for a new MRI machine, you will need to factor these expenses into your proposal. You will also need to explain environmental forces that may affect the budget and how your proposal addresses those forces.

There is no specific format you must follow for this assessment. This is a budget proposal and should be organized in a clear and logical manner. Support your work with references to at least two professional resources, and follow the APA guidelines for in-text citations and references.

Requirements

Complete the sample operating budget by filling in the 2017 column. Include this information as a table inserted into your budget proposal, or attach separately in the assessment submission area.

In your proposal, be sure you do the following:

• Describe the environmental forces that will affect or are likely to affect the budget for the next year. (Consider things such as compliance changes, changes in how insurance claims are processed, changes in laws and regulations, and so on.)
• Complete a 2017 operating budget that includes the purchase of new billing software and a new MRI machine. (This is where you use the sample operating budget.) Keep in mind that there will be costs beyond the purchase price, such as training for staff, the addition of more staff, and maintenance. You may want to refer to Assessment 3 and the cost-benefit analysis you completed.
• Explain how this proposed budget aligns with the target profit margin.
• Explain the measures you will implement to track financial performance over the next year. How will you evaluate financial performance?