Health Care and Finance in Local Hospital - Essay Example

"Health Care and Finance in Local Hospital" is an engrossing example of a paper on the health system.

Term

Definition

Scenario

Forecast

Estimation of an institution’s future financial results for a given timeframe which in most cases is a financial year. Forecasting aids in the prediction of revenue and estimation of financial performance for the given period.

A scenario in the healthcare field is the projection of expenditures on Medicare in relation to GDP. Important factors include newer technologies, policy guidelines, and cost of care, age of the population, economic growth and health position in the population. Forecasting is important in informing policy direction and budgetary allocations to health care and as such poor forecasting may result in improper planning as well as under-coverage.

Full-time equivalents

FTE is a term used particularly in relation to the Health Care Reform Law. It helps in determining employee figures i.e. both full & part-time for an employer to be eligible for tax credits. Employees on full time should work for 2080 hours in a year while those on part-time assignments are taken as a fraction of 2080; their total is calculated to arrive at the number of FTE’s

In 2012 an employer-paid 4 employees’ salary 2,080 hours of work per person, 4 employees 1040 hours of work per person and 1 for 2400 hours of work.

FTE= [(4x2080) + (4x1040) + 2080]/ 2080

FTE= [8320 + 4160 + 2080]/ 2080

FTE= 14560/2080

FTE= 7

FTE when used well can help balance staffing thus avoid over or understaffing and hence control costs.

Noncontrollable expenses

Uncontrollable expenses are those cost which cannot be significantly influenced by a certain manager or responsibility center. 

In emergency settings, for instance, a supervisor has just a little or no influence at all on the costs to be incurred on those doctors in the emergency department for a given period of time. Costs assigned to a center of responsibility can, therefore, have controllable and non-controllable aspects at the same time. Efforts should be made to distinguish between the two in order to achieve better performance appraisals.

Nonproductive time

Nonproductive time refers to those hours employees spend while awaiting assignment.  The employer is still obligated to compensate even though employees are normally not engaged in work over these periods since they are needed to work when it arises.

Scenarios include lunch and short breaks, vacations and idle time such as when a doctor is reading a newspaper while waiting for patients. On-call times and lunch hours aren’t compensated since employees have no assignments over the periods, while short break & periods of rest must be compensated since they lead to increased levels of efficiency among employees. Good utilization of concept can assist manage costs and curb confrontations with employees given the ramifications it has on payroll.

Staffing

A process by which organizations acquire, deploy and maintain sufficient workforce levels with desirable qualities that impact positively on the efficiency of the organization.

A healthcare organization, for instance, must ensure it maintains enough personnel in all departments and aligns the employees with certain organizational customer-centric cultures that ensure customer satisfaction. Proper utilization of concept increases service levels and customer satisfaction while poor utilization can result in losses due to overstaffing or bad customer experiences due to understaffing and poor training.