MHA@GW Module 3 - Finance

Key Competencies:

Decision Making:  Solving Business Problems and Making Decisions.

Financial Management:  Financial management.

Quantitative Skills:  Quantitative Analysis.

Regulations:  Standards and Regulations.

Health Care Issues:  Health Care Issues and Trends Health.

Care Issues:  Health Care Personnel

My Development:

• The finance module helped expand my understanding of healthcare financing and how to apply it to the private practic business setting that I currently work in from understanding statement of operations to balance sheets.  I had not taken an Accounting or Economics class since my undergraduate studies and it was surely insightful to re-acquire those same accounting principles again that I will need to apply in a higher level C-suite position.  
• Some new capabilities that I developed during this module that I now apply to my position as a clinic manager include calculating FTEs, personnel expenses, overhead expenses, cost managements, budget analysis, and revenue cycle.
• One new career direction that I may be interested in pursuing is working for a payer organization such as Cigna or United Healthcare in overseeing revenue, expenses, claims, and reimbursements to providers.  Another specialty would likely be working for an Independent Physician Association in managing ACOs and facilitating contract negotiations on the behalf of providers.
• Understanding income statements and how to calculate revenue and expenses from scratch has shown to be a very daunting and time-consuming task.  I hope to consider focusing on doing these kinds of accounting spreadsheets until it becomes second nature to me and that I can perform them as easy as basic algebra.  
• It was nice to finally get some clarity on how FTEs are determined, calculated, and how they factor into calculating personnel expenses which account for about 60% of a health-care organization's expenses such as a hospital.  There was also great deal of effort put into understanding and calculating capital depreciations.  What was surely surprising to me was learning near the end of the module the dangers and stunning costs of health-care fraud that clearly needs to be dealt with.  Health-care fraud is clearly another major driver of our overall health-care costs as a nation.  I now understand why payers and providers need to be especially delicate when handling certain health information and patient demographics.  This concept applies greatly to tasks such as verification of eligibility and benefits, use of Tax ID numbers, electronic clearinghouses, health plan ID numbers and group numbers, etc.
• A new perspective that I'm currently encountering is understanding not-for-profit health-care organizations and how they qualify for 501c3 tax exempt status.  Such daunting tasks include complying with Community Benefit standards and developing Community Health Needs Assessment reports every 3 years.  I learned a great deal of how the 2 largest not-for-profit hospitals here in Dallas detail their CHNAs and financial reports through www.guidestar.org.  The two are Texas Health Resources and Baylor Scott & White Health.
• The most obvious challenge that I needed to overcome during this module was time-management.  Creating budges from scratch and ledgers takes a great deal of resources and much analytical thinking.  It is even more challenging when detailing such revenues and expenses on an income statement.  I guess I'm use to working with current accounting software and programs such as Quickbooks as opposed to building one from scratch.