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Healthcare financial ethics
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The purpose of financial measurement in healthcare is to provide the community with the services it needs, at a clinically acceptable level of quality, at a publicly responsive level of amenity, at the least possible cost. This is done by providing healthcare finance managers with accounting and finance information to help accomplish the purpose of the organization (Nowicki, 2015). When making accounting decisions about budgeting and inventory control, an understanding of economics, statistics, and operations research is needed. Major Financial Measures There is no licensure requirements needed to be a healthcare financial manager. Healthcare financial managers observe and supervise many measurements. Some things they monitor are admissions …show more content…
Monitoring staff levels is an important factor. Also leveling the flow of patients in and out institutions could help to reduce wide fluctuations in occupancy rates and prevent surges in patient visits that lead to overcrowding, poor handoffs, and delays in care. Studies show that overcrowding in areas such as the emergency rooms lead to adverse outcomes, because physicians and nurses having less time to focus on individual patients. One study found that for each additional patient with heart failure, pneumonia, or myocardial infarction assigned to a nurse, the odds of readmission increased between 6 percent and 9 percent (Hostetter and Klein, 2013). All of which costs the hospital money. Measures Most Important for the Survival of a Healthcare Organization In order for an organization to be successful, they need to survive and grow. A low occupancy rate of hospitals has been a subject of discussion. Supposedly, the national average occupancy rate of hospitals is lower than it should be because of rising costs of hospital care. Factors causing variations in occupancy rates are hospital size, product diversification, and urgent versus non-urgent …show more content…
The government controls and regulates healthcare somewhat because healthcare organizations are in a position to take advantage of the elderly and sick so there are regulations that protects them. It seems as though healthcare facilities are being paid less for their services today. Some critical measures for the survival of a healthcare organization are to optimize performance and quality. Finding system-wide efficiencies and cost reduction healthcare will help. In order to get better and keep high quality and performance while still raising reimbursements, it is necessary and important to involve doctors with the ideas and plans for any management strategies. Connecting and teaming up with other community interested parties allows the organization to support the financial and quality goals, and coordinate care across the board giving more efficient and quality care (McKesson, 2018). This could help bring occupancy and admission levels up along with maximizing technology’s value by connecting the dots to help reduce complexities and cost. As regulatory, financial, clinical and consumer pressures influence healthcare organizations to produce and provide more effective and efficient care, healthcare technology becomes even more
The challenges that all acute care hospitals and facilities faces are the demand for highly specialized services has increased. The US population is constantly aging and the elderly tend to need more acute care services. Because many people lack health insurance, they tend to use emergency rooms in the hospitals as their source of care. The increase demand in acute care prompted hospitals to expand their facility
Management of hospital beds is a concern for most organizations. Yet, most approaches are based on static, unadaptable estimates in length of stay (Schmidt, Geisler, & Spreckelsen, 2013). Increased length of stay contributes to longer admission wait times for patients, leading to both patient and staff dissatisfaction, and increased cost for an organization. Hence, process improvement in this area would lead to value added change. However, change is difficult for most. Complacency and fear of the unknown can create resistance within an organization.
In the case of nurse staffing, the more nurses there are the better outcome of patient safety. When there enough staff to handle the number of patients, there is a better quality of care that can be provided. The nurses would be able to focus on the patients, monitor the conditions closely, performs assessments as they should, and administer medications on time. There will be a reduction in errors, patient complications, mortality, nurse fatigue and nurse burnout (Curtan, 2016). While improving patient satisfaction and nurse job satisfaction. This allows the principle of non-maleficence, do no harm, to be carried out correctly. A study mentioned in Scientific America showed that after California passed a law in 2014 to regulate hospital staffing and set a minimum of nurse to patient ratios, there was an improvement in patient care. Including lower rates of post-surgery infection, falls and other micro emergencies in hospitals (Jacobson,
If I was to become the CEO of a large health care organization, I would investigate and analyze all the information to determine what needs to be improved within the organization in order to make the best decision for the company. There are three major elements of quality: structure, process, and outcome”(Burns, Bradley, & Weiner, 2011, pg 251). One way to improve the quality of care in my organization is to be passionate and excited about the engagement of consumers. The patients need to be able to have access to the right information to educate themselves about their health care decisions. If they are active working with the physicians it can reduce emergency hospital visits and improve treatment and quality of life that is associated with different chronic diseases (Aulbach, 2015). As for my staff, I would ensure that they have all the equipment as well as the
It has taken on growing importance as health care facilities pursuing for larger investments to incorporate different systems aim at enhancing the hospital experience, medical outcomes, and clinical fiscal efficiency, as well as organize a facility for meaningful health care reforms (Barbazza, Langins, Kluge, & Tello, 2015). Health care organizations are restructuring the medical personnel structure to resolve the need for more organizational involvement, electronic medical groups, and the function of the health care physicians in a more relevant manner. They are also modernizing how they need to coordinate medical services more efficiently across the field of health care: critical, ambulatory, proficient nursing, and home care (De Vreese, Leys, Fontaine, & Dendoncker, 2016). Moreover, organizations are determining the fiscal outcomes of transferring from encounter-based structure to a performance- or capitation-based payment framework. Integrated delivery network is a physician-centered set of activities that stimulates the continuity of medical care as well as organizational and complex hospital management. Key elements comprise an incorporated technology framework that encourages the continuity of health care and permits all stakeholders to access to medicinal history of patients and other critical information (Barbee & Antle,
An organizational analysis is an important tool to become familiar with how medical businesses and organizations are able to meet standards of care, provide services for the community and provide employment to health care providers. There are many different aspects to evaluate in an organizational analysis. This paper will describe these many aspects and apply the categories to the University Medical Center (UMC) as the organization being analyzed.
Main data is analyzed with STATA 11. The descriptive analysis of the dependant variable Utilization rate (%) of hospital beds show that it has a Mean of 70,22 with a Standard deviation of 10.01, number of observations (years) is 24. Time-series line plots are used to observe and interpret the trends of utilization of health care services during specified time period (time unit= one year). Line plots are also used to observe the trends of changes of independent variables in the same time period as the changes of dependent variable were observed.
Thousands of nurses throughout the nation are exhausted and overwhelmed due to their heavy workload. The administrators do not staff the units properly; therefore, they give each nurse more patients to care for to compensate for the lack of staff. There are several reasons to why
The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of nursing staffing ratios in the healthcare industry. This has always been a primary issue, and it continues to grow as the population rate increases throughout the years. According to Shakelle (2013), in an early study of 232,432 surgical discharges from several Pennsylvania hospitals, 4,535 patients (2%) died within 30 days of hospitalization. Shakelle (2014) also noted that during the study, there was a difference between 4:1 and 8:1 patient to nurse ratios which translates to approximately 1000 deaths for a group of that size. This issue can be significantly affected in a positive manner by increasing the nurse to patient ratio, which would result in more nurses to spread the work load of the nurses more evenly to provide better coverage and in turn result in better care of patients and a decrease in the mortality rates.
As reported by Bowron (2010), hospitals will benefit from reducing patient-nurse ratio by saving money. Bowron point out that an adequate staffing ratio could lower hospitals’ costs significantly in the following ways:
Several studies have researched on the factors that attribute to longer wait times; Some have proved that increased number of patients visiting the care can overwhelm emergency department staff leading to longer wait times as disorganization occurs (Chan et al 2005). Medical physicians together with assistants and nurses in emergency departments suggest that hospital overcrowding is the main culprit leading to longer waits since patients waiting to be attended and admitted to hospital fill stretchers that instead would be available to the new
At its most fundamental core, quality improvement of healthcare services and resources requires disciplined attention to the measurement, monitoring, and reporting of system performance (Drake, Harris, Watson, & Pohlner, 2011; Jones, 2010; Kennedy, Caselli, & Berry, 2011). Research points to performance measurement as a significant factor in enabling strategic planning processes and achievement of performance goals (Tapinos, Dyson & Meadows, 2005). Thus, without a system of measurement that accounts for the performance behaviors of healthcare professionals, managers and administrative employees, quality improvement remains a visionary abstraction (de Waal, 2004).
The expenses have many contributing factors that can affect financial viability, such as: hospital costs for employees, providers, equipment suppliers, medical technologies, outsource services contracts, debts, and vendor for eatable supplies. The cost of payments for employees and providers depicts the largest expenditures of organizations. Additionally, debts financing significantly affect the financial viability as healthcare organizations are becoming to depend on debts more and more. Keeping up with the new medical technologies to ensure the best possible services that can be provided to patients as well as changes in outsource services contracts and vendors for eatable supplies also require large spending of organizations (Cleverly & Cleverly, 2017, pp. 32-34).
Emergency rooms are often crowded with low-risk patients, which result in long wait times, unsatisfied patients, misdiagnosis, and overworked emergency room physicians. As a result, at least two domains of quality of care, safety, and timeliness, are compromised by emergency room crowding (Bernstein et al., 2009). Additionally, one study found that periods of high emergency department crowding were associated with increased inpatient mortality and modest increases in length of stay and costs for admitted patients (Sun et al., 2013). Consequently, patients are not only paying a premium for their emergency room visits but may also be paying with their lives. Furthermore, the hospitals themselves are obligated to over utilize their staff and resources
Purpose: Hospital over-crowding has become a chronic and systemic problem in Ontario. Though policy-makers have tried to address this in the past, the total health and economic burden still remains quite high. This note identifies few important causes of hospital overcrowding and discusses cost effective strategies to reduce its overall burden. Background: Hospital overcrowding is a situation where the volume of patients seeking care at any given time, exceeds the capacity of the hospital to provide timely and adequate care.