Case Analysis Of The Health care Systems

The health care systems that have been established in Australia have exerted pressure of the highest degree on the growing population of the country. It must be noted here that Australia has a mixed system of public and private health care provisions that have been regulated at different levels of governmental proceedings. Furthermore, the understanding of the function and structure of the health care system along with the factors that result in the elevation of the related costs is the primary requirement for the establishment of a proper financial management structure (Kaur 2015). The issue that has been presented in this question is that a case study where a nurse manager has been appointed for the purpose of managing a 32 bed general surgical ward that is placed in a metropolitan hospital in a major city. The particular issue in regards to the restructuring of the hospital networks in the local Area Health Service is that the general surgical ward has been asked to be combined with the 12 bed surgical ward that has been specially constructed for the purpose of short stay. The steps that are required for the development of a nursing business service plan can be described in a detailed method. The initial stage involves planning of the business case for the employment of the organizational fund. Here, it can be understood that the establishment of the 12 bed short stay surgical ward will require sufficient funds. Moreover, the planning should be carried out in such a way that the general surgical ward is placed adjacent to the short stay ward without hampering the functioning of both the wards are not hampered by each other (Song, Qiu and Liu 2016). The aims and objectives of the expansion should also be clarified in order to determine the particular service that is being offered to the patients (Song, Qiu and Liu 2016). The required support from the employees and other stakeholders of business should also be derived for the implementation of the expansion of the health care facilities (Dafny, Ho and Lee 2017). Next, the cost that is required for the setting up of the expanded part of the business should be properly calculated and figured (Dafny, Ho and Lee 2017). Lastly, enough initiative should be taken in order to facilitate the successful establishment of the short stay ward along with the general surgical ward (Singh caes et al., 2015). The staff who will be required for attending the patients in the short stay ward have to be trained accordingly (Singh caes et al., 2015). Moreover, the sections in regards to the general surgical ward and the short stay ward should be clearly segregated and the purpose should be explained of the expanded facility should be explained to the nurses and other staff of the hospital (Singh caes et al., 2015) It must be noted here that in case of a health care facility, the data does not flow into the entity in a standardized way. A great deal of challenge has to be faced by the health care systems in terms of collection of data from patients, enrollees and other members. The health care systems deal in a diverse range of documents like the data collection systems, medical records, billing records, health plans and other related documents. The data that is essentially required to develop a service profile are the data in regards to the race and ethnicity of the patients, individual persona health records and electronic data health records and other systems of data. It must be noted here that the till that point is reached when the collected data has been better integrated by the entities, there will be a certain degree of redundancy that will be in the collection of data in regards to the race, ethnicity and other related patient information. Moreover, the methods that would be adopted for the collection of information should be integrated into the data flows that are operating in the current times. The issue in regards to the efficiency and privacy of the patients should also be considered (Parikh 2017). Therefore, the documents that should are needed to be collected for the purpose of analyzing and developing a service profile are the supply market sources document. This document will help in identifying the suggested external sources that will essentially reflect the supply market data that will result in the further development of the effective business strategies. A developing strategic commissioning plans document is also required. Therefore, the documents that will be required are Guidance on Developing Strategic Commissioning Plans, Options Appraisal, External Data Sources Template, Registers, Medication journals, Clinic guidelines, Documents for recording the details of the diseased. The service demand for the new service level would be that the patients who would need treatment for a day or two, could be accommodated in the short stay ward and treated accordingly. However, it must be noted here that the ward has the capacity to accommodate 12 individuals at once. Therefore, the facilities should be arranged in that particular way. The work methodology that should be utilized for the determination of the supply of nurses required to staff the new service level are that the nurses already attending the general surgical ward should be properly trained in order to carry out the attending of the individuals who will be admitted to the short stay ward. It can be easily deduced from the names that the patients who will be attending the general surgical ward would be accommodating those patients that need intense care, as they will be undergoing general and complex surgeries. On the other hand, the short stay surgical ward will be accommodating those patients who can be cured in a lesser degree of time and do not hold such complexities in terms of injuries or other diseases. This means that the nurses who are attending the general surgical ward patients will be readily able to treat the patients of the short surgical ward. The only providence that should be available is a proper training and guideline framework for th e purpose of distinctly making the process clear to the nurses and other staff of the hospital in regards to the nature patients in both the surgical wards and the level of service they need. There is no certain concern in regards to the skill-mix or staff education issues for the purpose of attending to the patients of the short stay surgical ward. This is because the patients of the general surgical ward need due care and attention as they are suffering from injuries or other disease that are complex in nature and need surgery. Therefore, the degree of skill that is needed to attend to the patients of this particular ward will be apparently higher than the skill that is required to attend the patients of the short stay surgical ward. Thus, it can be deduced that the nurses and other staff will not be facing any kind of issues in regards to the staff education. However, it must be noted here that the particular behavior will be different in case of the patients that are for general and complex surgeries and the patients who are to get well soon in a shorter period of time. It is the primary duty of the nurse manager to make this clear among the nurses and other staff so that they can understand the degree of difference in behavior and service between the patients of the general surgical ward and the short stay surgical ward (Parikh 2017). A cost centre budget might be beneficial for the nurse manger to control the expenditures of the wards (Dafny, Ho and Lee 2017). The advantages of the cost centre budget are that the implementation of a cost centre budget will help in the comparison of the performance of the service unit in terms of the short stay surgical ward and the general surgical ward. A cost centre budget will help the nurse manager in identifying the underperforming parts of the hospital or the parts that require excessive un-estimated costs. A cost centre budget will help in the identification of the centers that generate the largest amount of expenditure. The identification of the cost centers will also facilitate the fact that the management of the hospital will be able to target these centers as the primary areas where the cost management strategies could be applied. A cost center budget also helps in improving the reaction speed. This is because the cost center budget will help in the allocation of the m ost skilled and responsible staff that will try to reduce the cost in facilitating such a center, which will in turn improve the reaction, speed. A cost center budget will also enable the staff and the nurses to make decisions on their part, which will increase the degree of motivation and thus enhance productivity. A flexible budget refers to the particular budget that includes the calculation of the different levels of expenditure in regards to the variable costs that depends on the changes in the actual amount of revenue that is incurred. A flexible budget is prepared at the end of each accounting period and this particular budget involves preparation in accordance to the inputs. The flexible budget is next compared to the actual revenue incurred for the purpose of controlling the expenditures. Some of the benefits of the flexible budgets are that a flexible budget is useful for those businesses whose costs are closely related to the level of business activity. This particular method of budgeting also is useful in measuring the effectiveness of the services provided by the employees or the staff. Moreover, a flexible budget can be very easily updated (Barr and McClellan 2018). A particular disadvantage of the flexible budget is that the implementation of such a budget is difficult to administer and formulate. A flexible budget cannot be aligned with any kind of accounting software making the comparison of the financial statements with the budgeted statements impossible. Moreover, a flexible budget cannot facilitate the comparison between the actual revenue and the budgeted revenue due to the fact that the both the numbers are similar (Barr and McClellan 2018). Zero based budgeting refers to the particular method of budgeting in which the expenses that are estimated to be incurred by a particular business entity for a new accounting period is assumed to be zero. This means that the expenses for the new accounting period are calculated on the basis of the actual expenses that are incurred rather than on incremental basis. The advantages of zero based budgeting are that this particular method of budgeting will result in focused operations, lower degree of costs, a controlled and disciplined execution of the business strategies in regards to effective cost management. The disadvantages of zero based budgeting can be listed down to the fact that this particular method of budgeting is resource intensive in nature. Moreover, a zero based budget is exposed to a high degree of manipulation by the managers of the organizations as it involves short term planning(Barr and McClellan 2018). An output based budgeting refers to the particular method of budgeting that is dependent on the performance by the employees or the staff of the organization. It is that method of budgeting that ties the measurement of the individual or the departmental performance with the particular process of budgeting. The advantage of output based budgeting is that the amount that is allocated to a particular department has a direct link with the departmental performance. This inspires the department personnel to increase their all round productivity in order to obtain more monetary benefits that may be allocated via the output based budgeting method. A disadvantage of the output based budgeting is that this particular kind of budget is prepared from the baseline of the organization and construct a request for the budget from each department. However, the ultimate grant of the budgeted amount depends on the high-ranking officials of the management who may manipulate the figures or take decisions that are exposed to political influences (Miller 2018). Among the above mentioned three methods of budgeting, the particular method that would be most suitable for the nurse manager to implement in the hospital is the flexible budget. This is because the flexible budget essentially involves the preparation of the budget on the basis of the level of activities that are performed in the field of work. Therefore, this is the suitable method of budgeting. The three main areas of expenditure that may be considered while developing a cost centre budget are the expenditure related to the different surgeries that might have to be conducted for the patients in the general surgical ward; the expenditures related to the general pharmacy that will be installed within the hospital for the welfare of the patients. Moreover, the third major area that should be considered is that the expenditure in relation to the emergency ward should also be considered as the most critical medical cases are conducted here. Moreover, this is the ward where the most valuable medical equipments and applications are placed, the maintenance of which requires sufficient cost. An example of the cost center budget has been shown below that may be applied in case of the private hospital. The salaries and wage budget that has been prepared above consist of the mandatory remuneration components that should be received by a personnel in the health care sector. The assumptions have been made on the basis of the different salary components that are given by reputed health care institutions in Australia. Moreover, the overtime allowance that has been included in this particular table indicates the extra monetary benefit that will be received by the staff. This is on account of the fact that the nurses might have to do overtime duty on the account of the fact that the work space now has been expanded into an additional unit of short stay surgical ward (Dafny, Ho and Lee 2017). The conclusion that can be arrived at from the discussions in the preceding paragraphs is that setting up or expanding a health care facility in Australia is a rigorous process. Beginning from planning the facility to the preparation of the salaries and wage budget requires skilled analysis and evaluation. However, the service provided by these health care facilities and the hospitals is commendable and should be praised for the welfare carried out by these entities. 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