Course Number: 90-831

Advanced Financial Management of Health Care

Units: 6

The mini-course is designed to provide the students with a practical understanding of the challenges in managing a healthcare facility. Through the use of actual data, guest speakers from Children’s management and a major healthcare insurance company, students will develop an understanding of the challenges that were faced by the hospital over the past decade. As the sole pediatric facility in the area, Children’s experienced positive financial results and little competition until the early 1990’s. This was the result of increased penetration of managed care into the region and insurance companies purchasing physician practices. Children’s responded, like many facilities, by attempting to cut costs and buy practices in order to protect market share. What occurred is that such actions caused further deterioration in the financial results. Fiscal Year 1997 produced the worst financial results in the hospital’s history causing the Board to take drastic actions. What followed was during a five year period, operating results improved by approximately $25 million as a result of changing leadership, going back to business-basics, and creating a greater sense of accountability throughout the organization. Although Children’s will be used as a case study, the topics discussed are applicable to any healthcare institution.

Advance work will include financial statement review and analysis. The on-campus classroom sessions will include guest speakers and discussion of real life challenges experienced at Children’s Hospital over the last 10 years. The principal topic areas of the course are:

Financial Statement Analysis
Revenue Cycle components
Contracting challenges
Expense management
Physician practice models
Nursing challenges
Leadership
Non-profits accessing Capital

Faculty:
Mark J. Giaquinto