Assignment: Assessing Critical Business Indicators
In order to be a sound financial manager, you need to know the fiscal intricacies of your organization or department. Decisions about future expenditures should be based on careful calculations of organizational or departmental needs. By using critical business indicators, you can more effectively balance the fiscal realities of your budget with the functional demands of your department. In this Discussion, you examine the use of critical business indicators to assist in financial decision making for a health care department or organization. By Day 1 of this week, your Instructor should assign you a problem from the Zelman, McCue, and Glick online text. If you did not receive an assignment, contact your Instructor.
To prepare:
• Review this week's Learning Resources, focusing on how critical business indicators can be used in financial decision making.
• For the problem you were assigned, complete the calculations and then answer the questions included.
• Select a different business indicator than you used in your problem.
Reflect on how this critical indicator could assist a nurse manager to more effectively balance the demands placed on a department while still meeting budgetary constraints. Find an example.
• Assess the ramifications of making a decision without having the types of information these business indicators provide.
• If it was imperative for you to make a certain purchase or launch a new initiative, but your break-even point was calculated as higher than the expected revenues, what are your options?
Post your response to the question you were assigned and explain your reasoning. Suggest how nurse managers could use the critical business indicator you selected to both meet the needs of a department or organization and remain within budget. Provide a specific example. Describe potential ramifications of making a financial decision without using business indicators. Specify strategies for addressing a situation where a break-even point is higher than expected revenues.
Required Readings
Baker, J. J., Baker, R. W., & Dworkin, N. R. (2018). Health care finance: Basic tools for nonfinancial managers (5th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning.
•Chapter 12, "Financial and Operating Ratios as Performance Measures" (pp. 127-134)
Review: This chapter introduces a number of different tools that can be used to measure the performance of an organization. These include liquidity ratios, solvency ratios, and profitability ratios.
•Chapter 15, "Using Comparative Data" (pp. 161-173)
Review: In this chapter, you are introduced to the criteria for identifying other health care organizations that are comparable to your own. Data from these organizations can then be used to evaluate your own organizational performance. Zelman, W., McCue, M., & Glick, N. (2009). Financial management of health care organizations: An introduction to fundamental tools, concepts, and applications (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass. Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.
•Chapter 7, "The Investment Decision" (pp. 271-328)