NURS FPX 6216 Assessment 2 Preparing and Managing an Operating Budget
Accumulating baseline data that can help in gathering information regarding the organization’s existing state is essential for the development of an adequate budget. The purpose of using these two methods of data accumulation is to gather information from both internal and external sources to better understand the previous budget, the hospital’s weaknesses, challenges, and needs. This will help the nurse leader to assemble data into more comprehensive budgeting trends.
To evaluate the utilization of funds, the SWOT analysis helps to determine the opportunities, threats, weaknesses, and strengths of the organization.
The yearly expenses are calculated through staff salaries, the amount budgeted for new employees, training, overtime pay, appraisals, medical supplies, medication reviews, research, technology maintenance, management of hygiene procedures, and patient surveys. Besides, patient care, research grants, charitable donations, medical aid, and employee retention are the primary sources of revenue. Nevertheless, there can be some unseen aspects regarding the expenses of adverse events, emergent transactions, demotivation or brain drains, and patient influx problems while planning, managing, or executing the operating budget. Such doubts might lead to unforeseen increments in costs or force the allocation of resources forthwith
Table 1 (a):
Budget category and the Expense per year (USD$)
Table 1 (b):
Budget Category
Expense Per Year (USD $)
Staff Salaries
800,000
New hiring
300,000
Compensation of Budget
200,000
Appraisal and bonuses
300,000
Assessment funds
300,000
Medical supplies
200,000
Medication
400,000
Research and training
300,000
Maintenance of Technology
150,000
Hygiene management
200,000
Total expense
2,950,000
Budget category and the Expense per year (USD$)
Category
Revenue Per Year (USD$)
Patient care
900,000
Research grants
350,000
Charitable Funds
900,000
Medical aids
700,000
Staff retention
500,000
Total Revenue
3,350,000
The income is higher than the expenditure, as indicated by the estimate of revenue and expenditure. The budget helps in showing how the income is higher than the expected costs, e.g., salaries and recruitment, which can easily be recovered by retaining employees and financial stability. Similarly, donations and grants are able to enhance the return on investment (ROI) of the organization by sponsoring training costs.
Budget Creation and Designing
A structured and sequential process, budget design and preparation involves careful planning, analysis, and decision-making and differentiation of contradicting information to maintain consistency and transparency and ensure that the information is based on factual data and financially realistic. Strategic planning and budgeting are employed in preparing the budget. Particularly, the budget objectives are determined by aggregating data from various historical trends and putting forward aspects that are significant in developing and designing the budget, particularly when creating a healthcare budget for development and design. Patient expectations, current resources, and organizational economic status have been identified as significant impacts from research (Nilsen et al., 2020).
Because the financial condition of the organization is also considered when establishing the budget, it is purely based on the amount of funds that would be expended and how much research would be available for assignment or subcontracting. The allocation of resources can be helped by the analysis of needs that was done before allocating the resources. Similarly, expectations and employee and patient retention are important in revealing the strengths, weaknesses, risks, and opportunities for growth of the organization. Similarly, it is also important to understand that the budget can be different depending on how these resources are available as the economic needs change.
NURS FPX 6216 Assessment 2 Preparing and Managing an Operating Budget
Information collected from sources such as need-based study and baseline surveys to prepare our budget. The information is then shared through SWOT analysis, which enables the organization to critically analyze the spread of data, strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities. It enables the organization to determine the key aspects, such as appraisals, salaries, increments, and other allowances, to make the budget effective and people-centric. Subsequent to this, the budget is allocated to different departments such as labor, maintenance, and services. The plan is then documented, highlighting every retention strategy and how it aligns with the organization’s financial plan. The plan is also monitored and evaluated while having a budgetary loop of flexibility for unexpected situations that allow the organization to make timely adjustments.
Since the expense can be different because of alternative rates and supplier requirements for different departments depending on alternative assumptions such as inflation, shifts in trends in the marketplace, sales predictions, patient likes, and risk analysis, it was important to recognize conflicting information while creating a budget, including the calculation of costs and prediction of income.
Strategic Plan and Evaluation Criteria
Creating a strategic plan is an inclusive process that starts with linking the financial plan to the mission of the organization.
Strategic planning begins with setting clear goals that the organization believes in and that are measurable and achievable. Strategic planning addresses the needs of the moment, assesses the resources presently available, aids in ascertaining the uncertainty in the system, and readies staff and leaders to adapt along with it. Our budget was driven by employee retention and patient-focused care. Both of these objectives are objectives of our organization and are connected to each other since patient-focused care is only achieved when talented employees are retained and content. Executive leaders will more likely sanction the budget since every budgetary expenditure has a reason explaining why the change is essential. The budget provides for some amenities, such as renovating the lounge of the nursing staff in order to create a better infrastructure, but the modifications are already proposed in the budget that was initially put forth.
The core objectives of the budget are reducing employee turnover, enhancing patient-centric care, and strengthening professionals’ skill sets. Thus, retaining skilled workers with an increased retention rate and reducing turnover is a critical aspect. The strategy developed was:
Employee Retention
The key to employee retention is retaining employees with competitive compensation and benefits packages.
The vision is to build a productive work environment culture centered on employee welfare and promoting the underlying values of diversity, acceptance, and inclusivity.
Staff retention facilitates the organization in working with competent professionals and thereby enhancing its operation (Weyman et al., 2023). Similarly, most employees are ready to work overtime; rewards and remuneration must be provided; salaries will be revised; and merit-based increases can create feelings of love, gratitude, and concern for the workers, bonding them with the organization and boosting their satisfaction level. Employee retention can also be enhanced by developing market-competitive benefit packages, providing opportunities for growth, and developing interprofessional development programs. In order to reduce turnover, employee retention can be measured on an annual basis. Employee retention rates can be measured using benchmarks and an employee satisfaction survey
Patient-Centered Care
By effective communication and teaching, the aim is to enhance patient engagement and provide coordinated care. Involving the patient in their care can be done through the adoption of a patient feedback system and promotion of a culture of compassion and personalized treatment (Kwame & Petrucka, 2021). Although this facility is for elderly citizens, these adjustments can enable them to take care of themselves more effectively. Surveys and patient feedback may be employed to measure levels of satisfaction and reduce readmissions, hospital-acquired infections, and complaints.
Training and Development
With a design curriculum, training and development can establish in-depth training for both new hires and existing employees. It can also facilitate cross-functional team training and skill acquisition. Similarly, investing in leadership development programs can facilitate effective operation. Clinical quality measures such as reduced infection rates, improved patient outcomes, enhanced interpersonal cooperation, and a calculation of return on investment for training with regard to employee performance, patient outcomes, and cost savings are employed for measurement.
Ongoing Budget Management
Once we formulate a budget, the budget process starts. The above budget will run cyclically, requiring analysis, formulation, management, and continuous monitoring. Budget management is an ongoing process. The strategy for the continuous budget will be split into two phases. The first will entail taking data every three months that will be utilized to monitor quality measures such as employee retention, rates of hospital-acquired infections, and rates of medical errors and to analyze the long-term sustainability of the budget in reports. Reports from every department on a quarterly basis will be provided, and a SWOT analysis will be conducted to provide assessments of the data that has been obtained and make revisions to the budget. It is based on the premise that clinical quality issues can be avoided with the assistance of positive environmental modifications, appreciation, and high employee satisfaction.
NURS FPX 6216 Assessment 2 Preparing and Managing an Operating Budget
It is also believed that the training will allow the staff to employ patient-centered care and become more confident in their job, which will reduce defensive treatments. Lastly, the entire budget strategy is based on the premise that improving the environment will boost clinical outcomes and staff satisfaction, leading to long-term success and revenue generation. Through tracking workers’ clock-in and clock-out hours, measuring the quality of overtime, assigning appropriate tasks and benefits to employees, providing certificates for paid time, or compensating in terms of bonuses and appraisals, the new spending plan hopes to reduce non-productive time. Similarly, motivating a work-life balance culture to facilitate the shift work schedules of nurses will enable them to relax and improve productivity. Overtime work has been found to have a detrimental psychological effect, decreases morale, and impacts work productivity (Wong et al., 2019). Further, the repeating budget for equipment and supplies is related to maintenance, which can be managed by efficient use of technology and availing services within the capacity limit.
Conclusion
In summary, the ongoing assessment was based on developing a working budget for a small house with 35 beds and 20 equivalent workers.
The patient-centered care is given utmost importance, and personnel retention is kept in view in the developed budget. Need analysis was applied for developing the scheduled budget. identifying opportunities, threats, and trends through a SWOT analysis and balanced scorecard to aid the organization in solving the issue of employee turnover while also concentrating on patient-centered care. Furthermore, training and development, patient-centered care, and staff retention were suggested to assist with turnover, and immediate evaluation and adjustment would assist with budgeting.
References
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Brennan, D., & Wendt, L. (2021). Increasing quality and patient outcomes with staff engagement and shared governance. OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.3912/OJIN.Vol26No02PPT23
Kwame, A., & Petrucka, P. M. (2021). A literature-based study of patient-centered care and communication in nurse-patient interactions: Barriers, facilitators, and the way forward. BMC Nursing, 20(1), 158. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-021-00684-2
