Understanding budgeting goals, processes, and incentives are vital skills for health care managers as they are responsible for creating budgets and managing their departments within the established budget. However, many health care managers lack these basic skills. This book is a comprehensive examination of budgeting practices designed to provide students with the ability to construct budgets and analyze differences between actual financial results and the budget. Each chapter takes the reader through a step-by-step process to analyze systems, incorporate organizational goals into budgets, identify performance issues, and explore how budget systems impact behavior.

With the growing importance of budgeting and budget analysis in today's outcome-value oriented healthcare environment, there is an ever-increasing need to provide today's healthcare students with budgeting skills they need to be successful. While most healthcare finance texts include a chapter on budgeting, this coverage is often insufficient to adequately prepare them, as future financial managers, for the demands of upper management. A great supplement to a wide range of finance, economics, and accounting courses across the health disciplines, Practical Budgeting for Health Care: A Concise Guide covers the full scope of budgeting and budget analysis–from incremental budgeting, forecasting, and flexible budgeting, to variance analysis, capital budgeting, and more–providing students with the information and skills they'll need to budget effectively. Key Features ? Includes step-by-step instructions on constructing budgets, focusing on incremental and flexible budgeting, the two mos

A plain-English guide to health care budgeting simplifies even the mos t complex money mattersfor finance pros or beginners. Brimming with re al-world examples, spreadsheets, charts, and tables, this refreshing r esource provides quick and clear guidance on all hospital spending iss uesfrom the most basic to the very sophisticated. It is an enormously helpful reference to help control spending, increase mastery of key bu dget concepts, strengthen the foundations of operational planning, and speed up problem solving.

Practical budget management is at the core of this book. As well as giving an insight into the way budgets behave in certain circumstances and what can be done about it, the book also deals with practical steps the budget and resource manager can take to eliminate waste and reduce opportunities for fraud and collusion. Better budget management means that the organisation can concentrate greater resources on matters that will significantly enhance patient and client care. The book identifies the day-to-day issues that affect managers in health and social services, and provides advice and a structured approach that facilitate both comprehension of the problem areas and possible solutions. It successfully reduces complex budget issues into manageable chunks, with case studies, key points, tips, and worked examples to aid understanding. It offers practical assistance to managers, tutors, students, board members and other health and social care professionals. The book is third in a trilogy which provides practical solutions to the complex problems of resource, financial and budget management in health and social care. "Managing in Health and Social Care" provides essential checklists for frontline staff is about process quality in financial and business management. It concentrates on doing the right thing, first time, every time. "Resource Management in Health and Social Care": essential checklists is about matching available resources to the environment. It deals with workplace and environmental problems associated with resource scarcity. 'Although there may be constant change to organisation and structures, great improvements in care, treatment, and technology and ever more sophisticated ways of funding health and social care, the actual act of spending money will always be the responsibility of budget managers who are in the front line. This book identifies the day-to-day issues that affect managers in health and social services and provides advice and a structured approach that facilitate both comprehension of the problem areas and possible solutions.' - William Bryans, in the Introduction.