Accounting Project
Description
A healthcare organization needs an elaborate plan for managing its financial assets so that the needs of all stakeholders could be met successfully. Particularly, it is crucial to make sure that patients are placed in a favorable environment for their further recovery, as well as that nurses are provided with an opportunity to work efficiently and develop new competencies and skills. For this purpose, an accounting tool must be incorporated into the organizational setting of a healthcare facility.
The target organization can be described as a nursing facility for aging people with mental health concerns (particularly, Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body dementia, vascular dementia, and similar mental disorders that are typical for aging people are common among the target population). The facility provides 200 beds for inpatients and has a total of 131 nurses. Because of the lack of competent nursing staff, the nurse-to-patient ratio is dropping. Furthermore, the number of financial assets in the hospital environment is shrinking, whereas the number of patients is growing. Therefore, it is crucial to rearrange the current framework of managing the organization’s finances and redistribute the available assets to finance every domain accordingly.
To manage the current problems in the context of the target organization, one must consider using a cash flow statement as the means of establishing a more rigid control over the key financial activities in the hospital. As a result, a better understanding of how the money is used will become a possibility. Consequently, the dents in the current approach toward allocating the financial assets will be identified, and a viable strategy for managing them will be designed (Mosadeghrad, 2014).
Terms and Principles
The cash flow statement (CFS) will be used as the means of regulating the organization’s expenses and determining the instances of unreasonable use of the corporate assets. Thus, the principles of sustainability as the foundation for managing the company’s financial resources will be introduced into the context of the hospital. In order to maintain consistency in the analysis of the financial operations carried out in the facility, the hospital managers will have to set rigid standards for the staff to provide reports. For instance, the reports will have to be submitted on a regular basis; furthermore, the principles of transparency must be maintained at all costs so that the instances of dishonesty could be identified and managed correspondingly.
Tool for Analyzing the Financial Status
As stressed above, the adoption of a reporting framework has been selected as the approach that will supposedly help the target organization improve its services and handle the issue associated with the drop in satisfaction levels among nurses and patients. A report as a tool for controlling the key financial operations in the environment of the hospital has its benefits and problems. For example, the reporting system will help identify a problem in the current strategy of allocating the financial resources of the facility immediately. As a result, a course of urgent actions will be designed in a manner as efficient and expeditious as possible. However, using a report as a system of control implies that the staff members should be honest and open about the steps that they take in the process of decision-making and carrying out key financial transactions. Therefore, apart from the use of reports, one should also consider applying financial audits as the means of checking the quality of the financial process independently and objectively (Harrington, Ross, Mukamel, & Rosenau, 2013).
Nevertheless, the adoption of a reporting system is likely to prove efficient, especially in the scenario where a sensible leadership strategy aimed at fostering the principles of accountability and Corporate Social Responsibility is applied. Thus, the concept of openness will support the usage of reports as the primary tool for managing the accounting processes. Consequently, the threat of corporate fraud, as well as the inappropriate allocation of the organization’s resources, will be avoided successfully (Herrington, 2017).
Application Strategy
In order to introduce the reporting system as the means of controlling key financial operations in the environment of the healthcare facility, one will have to provide a corporate philosophy and values that will help promote the essential principles of corporate ethics among the staff member. Furthermore, an efficient leadership strategy based on the principles of transformational and situational frameworks will have to be exerted so that the nurses in the specified facility could be motivated to develop the required qualities and skills. It is expected that the staff may resist the changes since the latter will imply that a tighter control should be established in the facility (Segal, 2016).
Once the necessary values are introduced into the context of the hospital, one will have to consider the tools for efficient information management and reporting processes. The adoption of the principles based on the security of the participants’ and patients’ personal data will have to be deployed in the environment of the hospital. The reports will have to be submitted on a daily basis by uploading a file to the cloud storage that is fully protected and safe from cyberattacks. After a brief overview of the reports, managers will have to provide feedback to the staff. As long as the communication process between the leaders and the employees remains consistent, the issues associated with the mismanagement of the available financial resources can be avoided, and a more coherent framework for controlling and reducing expenses can be built.
References
Harrington, C., Ross, L., Mukamel, D., & Rosenau, P. (2013). Improving the financial accountability of nursing facilities. Web.
Herrington, J. B. (2017). Financial and strategic management for nonprofit organizations (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter GmbH.
Mosadeghrad, A. M. (2014). Factors influencing healthcare service quality. International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 3(2), 77-89. Web.
Segal, S. Y. (2016). Accounting frauds-review of advanced technologies to detect and prevent frauds. Economics and Business Review, 2(4), 45. Web.