Part 1

Variance analysis is very important for healthcare managers because it can be used to observe how well a healthcare organization is performing and also how close actual costs and revenues are to expected costs and revenues. However there are some caveats to its usefulness.

What is variance analysis and why is it important to healthcare providers? What is the difference between flexible budget variance and static budget variance?

Part 2

Benchmarking is gaining a lot of attention in healthcare industry these days. Benchmarking allows healthcare managers to assess and measure the quality of an organization's policies, products, programs, strategies, etc., and their comparison with standard measurements, or similar measurements of its peers. The objectives of benchmarking are (1) to determine what and where improvements are called for, (2) to analyze how other organizations achieve their high performance levels, and (3) to use this information to improve performance.

What is benchmarking, and how do you do it? How would you as a healthcare manager utilize this measurement tool?