Respond

EXPERIENCE

I had been a bedside nurse for 24 years before I transitioned into my current position as an Accreditation Specialist. I have been in my position a little over two years and due to being a bedside nurse I never had to deal with any budgeting issues. My husband tends to all our personally finances. I honestly have to admit, I am not good with money. My husband is so much better in planning and saving for the future, I have more of a spontaneous personality. I paying more attention and asking more questions to my department manager and director in regards to our budget. They have quarterly leadership meeting where our organizations financial information is discussed. After these meetings, my leaders share the information and are willing to answer any of our questions. They want to be transparent to allow us to be educated and knowledgeable in regards to our organization.

REFLECTION

The pre-conceived notion I had of healthcare financial and budgeting principle is of staffing. I did not realize developing a staffing budget consisted of a certain formula. I was unaware of the number of factors related to identifying the full-time equivalents (FTEs) needed to staff a hospital floor. I now understand that an FTE consisted of 2,080 hours/year for a full-time employee. And patient hours are a major factor, the percentage of direct admits from the emergency room (ER). The budget also has to take into consideration the skill mix needed for your organization.

Two concepts that were very interesting to me were the nonprofit and for-profit concepts. They only difference is that non-profit organizations do not pay taxes. For profit hospitals are owned and operated by financial cooperation’s and have access to larger sums of money when needed. Nonprofit organizations are more community oriented and focuses on what the community needs. They are typically in area that are financially well off but that is not the case for the organization I am affiliated with. My community is poor and Medicaid and Medicare are a high percentage of our reimbursement. Quality verses quantity is always a main focus for us. We do not provide a lot of specialty services but what we offer is quality care with the capability to stabilize and transfer to affiliated hospitals. We like to ensure our patients are receiving quality care not matter where they are sent.

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

My proposed project is implementing a sepsis bundle checklist to improve sepsis bundle compliance in the Emergency Department (ED) to improve patient outcomes. This project is not a high cost to the organization. The sepsis bundle checklist can be created by our quality department and once passed through the form committee for approval it can be rolled out for use. The education department will be involved to develop the education for the staff and providers to ensure the checklist is getting implemented correctly. The checklist will be printed in our print shop so each department, mainly ED, will order and charged to their cost center. There are no areas of additional financial or budgeting data that I feel will be affected by this proposal.