1. Briefly discuss the role of finance in the healthcare services industry. Has this role increased or decreased in importance in recent years? What is the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on the role of finance?

2. What are the three primary forms of business organizations? Describe their advantages and disadvantages from a financial point of view?

3. Consider a healthcare organization with which you are familiar with and explain the difference between cash and accrual accounting in healthcare setting. Be sure to include a discussion of the revenue recognition and matching principles.

4. Consider an organization with which you are familiar. Do you know how it reports its financial condition? How does it compare to another organization of a different size, with a different ownership structure, that provides different services, and/or in a different market?

5. Discus briefly the activity-based costing (ABC) concept and explain how ABC can differ from traditional costing approaches? Consider a healthcare organization with which you are familiar with and it uses ABC model.

6. Healthcare organizations strive to manage working capital in such a way that they can reliably cover their short-term expenses while also getting the best possible benefits from their capital. In managing working capital, healthcare organizations face some common challenges, as well as other challenges that are particular to the institution. What challenges would a for-profit facility that has a constant stream of revenue face in managing its capital? How would these challenges differ from a military hospital that is given its funding at the beginning of the year?

7. Bring to mind a wide range of healthcare organizations, such as a long-term care facility, large for-profit hospital, physicians' practice, VA hospital, or state-run clinic. Consider how budgeting would be influenced depending on an organization's sources of funding. How do the purposes or uses of a budget vary according to the kind of healthcare organization it is?

8. What types of decisions would need to be made before the investment is made? Indicate the main kinds of information/data needed to evaluate this capital investment project.

9. Explain the concepts of net present value and internal rate of return analysis. What do the results of net present value and internal rate of return analysis tell senior managers of an organization? Would sensitivity analysis be a useful tool for assessing this capital project's risk and return?