Assignment: Operating Budget for Healthcare

Assignment: Operating Budget for Healthcare

Assignment: Operating Budget for Healthcare

Question Description
Can you help me understand this Business question?

Design an operating budget for a healthcare organization. For a for-profit entity, you can find the financial statements and any additional information on one of the many sites where such information is available, such as Zacks Investment Research, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, etc. For example, search the site with HCA Holdings’ ticker symbol (“HCA”) and then look for the “Financial” tab or section when you come to the site’s HCA Holdings page. For the not-for-profit entity, you can locate a local, regional, or national nonprofit, religious-based healthcare system, and download and review the financial statements.

Your project will have the following components:

Title page
Executive Summary
Assumptions
Financial and operational analysis
Benchmarks and comparative analysis
Operating Budget
Conclusion
References
Appendix Section and as needed (not included in the required page count)
Project Objectives

To successfully complete this project, you will be expected to:

Apply fundamental concepts and practices of financial management and accounting to a healthcare organization.
Analyze financial statements and other reports to evaluate the overall operational and financial stability of a healthcare organization.
Demonstrate an understanding of how financial indicators are used to make assumptions about future financial performance.
Demonstrate an understanding of how operational indicators are used to make assumptions about future operational performance.
Design an operating budget for a healthcare organization.
Develop recommendations for a healthcare organization that are
supported by financial and operational analysis and indicators.
This project gives you an opportunity to select a healthcare organization with which you are familiar, analyze the operations and design an operating budget for the organization. Then, drawing on the concepts and principles from readings, exercises, current events, and class discussions, develop an operating budget project in which you:

Introduce the healthcare organization (background):
Define the operating and financial condition,
Analyze the organization using financial and operational indicators,
Search the literature for operational benchmarks of healthcare organizations and do a comparative analysis,
Offer assumptions,
Develop an operating budget to address financial and operational conditions; and
Develop a conclusion
As noted above, your project must include, but is not limited to, the following sections:

Title Page: Include a title, date, your name, and the course name and number.
Executive Summary: In the introduction, restate your approach and assumptions, the necessary background to your approach, and how you intend to address the key issues.
Assumptions: In this section, you integrate the information from the financial and operational analyses, make assumptions about the current and future status of the organization, and provide the rationale and supporting data for each assumption. The presentation should provide the reader with sufficient information to understand and support the assumptions.
Financial and Operational Analysis: In this section, you provide an in-depth analysis of the financial and operational issues of the healthcare organization, supported by relevant operational indicators, analysis, and current high-quality literature sources.
Benchmarks and Comparative Analysis: Present what you discovered in your search of the literature for operational benchmarks of healthcare organizations. Do a comparative analysis based on the operational benchmarks and your financial and operational analysis.
Operational Budget: In this section, present your best estimate, based on current knowledge and assumptions, of the financial operations of the organization for the following year (Year 2), using the current year (Year 1) as the base year.
Conclusion: summarize your major findings and recommendations.
Back up your responses with at least ten (10) current sources (no older than three years), five (5) of which are peer-reviewed articles. You may use the course textbooks as prime references, but you may use other course readings.

Submit a 10-12-page paper, not counting the title and references pages which you must include; and appendixes if needed. Format your paper according to the APA Requirements.

Assignment: Operating Budget for Healthcare

Assignment: Operating Budget for Healthcare

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation

Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality

Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes

I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.