Nursing Budget Summary

Application

Thus far the unit’s budget preparations have been completed through the collection of data from personnel expenses, non-personnel expenses, and workload figures; thus, BestCare Nursing Unit’s net revenue has been estimated at $6.5 million for the fiscal year. However, a 10% operational budget reduction has been called upon by the Chief Financial Officer; therefore, required reductions must be accomplished without negatively affecting quality patient care. Conducted research reveals that approximately 43% of nurses favor strengthened staffing rather than increased pay or shifts (SuccessFactors, Inc., 2009). Therefore, in order to accomplish the directive budget reductions and maintain control of the unit’s labor costs, modifications

The contract labor budget is noted as an over budget item; therefore, a 1.30% reduction will be executed thereby reducing costs down to $257,727 for the fiscal year. The reduction in the contract labor budget will allow nursing leaders to allocate to other resources within the budget (Williams, 2008). Since nursing staff makes up a large portion of the operational budget, nurses will be empowered to play an active role in the units cost containment efforts, particularly since they have direct contact with patient care which places them in a position to recognize inefficiencies and implement cost-saving reductions (Finkler et al., 2013; MacLeod, 2014; Williams, 2008). Inefficient use of supplies is costly (MacLeod, 2014); therefore, additional reductions will be accomplished through specific cost containment efforts with particular attention to both cleaning (-$20,000) and formulary supplies (-$10,000) books/publications ($-90,000), and telephone expenses ($-9,000) as the detected areas with which we were over budget. Furthermore, a unit based cost containment program will be implemented as research has shown that staff can play a pivotal role in helping mitigate costs through sensible control and utilization of supplies and medical equipment (Finkler et al., 2013; Mukuna, Mwaura-Tenambergen,