Heart Failure Clinic Resource Plan Budget

Heart Failure Clinic Resource Plan Budget

Introduction

Heart failure clinics should follow the national guideline recommendations in the implementation of multidisciplinary care in order to ensure that there is a consistent follow up (Arnold et al., 2011). This approach has proved to be effective in improving clinical outcomes, optimizing medications, and enhancing a personalized education (Huber, 2013). Nevertheless, resources required to provide these services differ immensely and may result to various clinical models depending on fiscal realities and feasibilities.  Therefore, budget planning is a critical issue of concern that need to be properly planned as discussed in this paper.

Management Strategies and Best Practices for Resourcing Health Care Services

 Budget planning in health care is an elusive asset which plays a vigorous role in planning the needs of the Chronic Heart Failure financial and staffing requirements, to ensure that the clinic organizations is able to meet the desired positive health outcomes (Huber, 2013). Owing to the dynamic nature of the healthcare sector, it is worth noting that this budget will be systematically reviewed after every financial year to ensure that the entire needs of the healthcare are factored. This is geared towards ensuring that all the resources required to improve the patient outcome are available.  The paper uses a business plan approach to identify the major categories and sub-categories that are needed to set up HFC, these includes; Labor cost, supplies, liability cost, teaching and research, insurance billing and capital expenses.

One of the import undertakings of the healthcare or hospital administrators is to ensure that hospital financial welfare and securities are up to the standards (Langenbrunner, Cashin, O’Dougherty & World Bank, 2009). As such, the hospital administrators should be keen enough to point out areas that if not properly handled will land the healthcare facility into financial catastrophe.

Items of the Capital Budget

The capital budget is an elusive aspect in budget allocation. It determines the hospital financial capabilities and the services that a health care facility can offer. This capital budget has a special focus on Staffing, Salary, and benefits,

Volume Assumption	FTE	Grand Approximation
Staffing		Job class
1	1.0	Nurse practitioner
1	1.0	Registered Nurse
1	1.0	Patient Care Technician
1	0.0	Social Worker
1	0.0	Dietician
1	1.0	Unit Clerk

Salary Benefits

Salary and Benefits	Rate	Job Class
1	$29/ hour	Registered Nurse
1	$14/hour	Patient Care Technician
1	$36/hour	Nurse Practitioner
1	$10/ hour	Unit Clerk
1	$18/hour	Dietician
1	$14/hour	Social Worker

Contingency Funds/ Liability costs

Essentially the environment of operation is deemed to be litigious which implies that it is vital for the hospital to protect itself of any legal complains. Mistakes done during operations or patient care cannot be out-ruled which necessitates the needs for contingency measures. For this reason, the clinic has established that professional liability insurance will be set up.

Since the health facility is being set up in an already established facility, it has been valued that the stat up cost will be categorized into two. This will include the renovation expenses which amount to $8, 000. The purchase of the equipment and establishing an IT infrastructure is set to add up to $15, 000. Thus, the total expenditure is expected to amount to $23, 000.

The operation expenses of any organization assume two categories including variable and fixed cost. In this case, the fixed cost is expected to remain constant despite of the duration of operation of the clinic. Perhaps, the cost of equipment among other clinical facilities is anticipated to remain constant.  For the clinic to sustain its fixed cost, it will have to ensure that it has running business by treating and admitting patients. Contrary, variable expenses are anticipated to change and thus the clinic can have a negotiating hand in order to maintain the cost of operation as low as possible. The variable expenses include payroll and staff benefits.

Capital and Supplies Expenses

In the healthcare sector, supply is one of the items that consumers a significant amount of budget allocation. In fact, a hospital cannot operate without supplies which avails the products, items among other things needed to provide Medicare to the patient.  Supplies in this case include; equipment, laboratory chemicals, food and drug. To ensure that the clinic is self-sustaining, the supplies will be funded from billings realized from services offered to the patient. Raising all the need funds during start up may pose to be a challenged. Thus, huge capital expenditures required for mega activities such as constructions, and acquiring equipment will be financed through donations, and contributions from well-wishers.

Insurance Billing

Basically, hospital revenues are earned from insurance services that are billed on patients. Therefore, HFC will acquire its finances both from private insurance companies and Federal Medicare. In order to cater for the indigent or people without insurance, the HFC will liaise with county health offices to ensure that such patients are catered for or transferred to county hospitals.

Labor Costs

According to research by Langenbrunner, Cashin, O’Dougherty and World Bank (2009), staff wages amounts to 62% of the hospital expenditures, also labor costs associated with other operations in the healthcare amounts to 11% of the entire labor cost.  With regard to healthcare based services or operations, the American Hospital Association notes that Human capital is one of the highly utilized aspect in every day activity of patient care (Amakali, 2015). Thus, it is important for HFC to factor in intensive human capital as seen in the above budget plan.

Professional and Legal Standards

The success of the HFC dependents on its ability to adhere with the set legal and ethical standards, this will help the clinic to operate in accordance with the established medical procedures and provide patients with the best care possible. As emphasized by nursing theories, nursing care should be patient oriented which implies that nurses should be ready and willing to surrender certain levels of control to patients during the treatment (Amakali, 2015). This is important because it will help to cater for the patient self-screen capacity and their readiness. As result, this approach has a direct impact in reducing the cost of outpatient services.

According to Amakali (2015), most of the patients are afraid to seek medical care due to expensive nature of medical care.  Therefore, the HFC has a mandate to help patients visit the facility office so that they can understand the costs associated with the crisis room visit et cetera, laboratory testing, pharmaceuticals, and diagnosis radiology. The clinic should also explain to the patients the dangers associated with un-attended health problems. At this point, it is important to communicate to the patient the plan charges or any discount or payment plan that is offered for the low income earners or the under insured.

The HFC will adopt the recommended Electronic billing that submits patient’s statements online. Therefore, the HFC will adopt data resources and tools such as electronic health records, health surveys, clinical trial data, administrative data and patient registry that will help to ensure efficient billing and collection of critical information in a secure, confidential and reliable approach. Most importantly, patients have a right to access accurate and precise information regarding the cost of clinical services before making a decision to visit the health center.  HFC endeavors to make sure that this information is easily available. This will help to eliminate fear of orbited prices. Consequently, patient will always be aware of the actual cost of services they are seeking.

Heart Failure Clinic Resource Plan Budget