MSN6216 Unit 5 Assignment Latest 2019 January

MSN6216 - Advanced Finance and Operations Management

Unit 5 Assignment

Preparing and Managing an Operating Budget

Professional Context

Sound financial management is essential to the fiscal well-being of all health care organizations, and the nurse leader plays an important part. Consequently, the preparation and effective management of operating budgets is a critical skill for nurse leaders. The budget guides leaders in optimizing the use of resources, and because nurses are closest to patients, they understand very well what it takes to operate on a daily basis and provide safe, high-quality care.

This assignment provides an opportunity for you to develop an operating budget for a health care unit. Keep in mind, staff is a large part of this budget and is often hard to control.

Scenario

You are the nurse manager of a 35-bed hospital unit with 20 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff. You have been given the task of getting the budget under control. Several people have recently left the unit, and you have been working to fill those open positions. Your staff work scheduled overtime and many sign up to work extra shifts. Your unit serves an older population, as well, and has incurred expenses associated with this group of patients.

Instructions

Note: The requirements outlined below correspond to the grading criteria in the Preparing and Managing an Operating Budget Scoring Guide, so be sure to address each point. You may also want to review the performance level descriptions for each criterion to see how your work will be assessed. Additionally, the Guiding Questions: Preparing and Managing an Operating Budget document, linked in the Resources, provides additional considerations that may be helpful in completing your assignment.

Prepare and submit an operating budget for your hospital unit.

Prepare the operating budget. Note: Assemble your budget figures in a table, using a format of your choice. You may use either Microsoft Word or Excel to create your budget table.

Explain how the budget was designed and created.

Develop a strategic plan.

Develop an approach to ongoing budget management.

Present budget data and information clearly and accurately.

Integrate relevant and credible sources of evidence to support your budget data and information, correctly formatting citations and references using APA style.

Note: Remember that you can submit all, or a portion of, your draft budget to Smarthinking for feedback, before you submit the final version for this assignment. However, be mindful of the turnaround time of 24–48 hours for receiving feedback if you plan on using this free service.

Submission Requirements

If you used Microsoft Excel to create your budget table, submit the Excel file along with your budget narrative. You may also add the Excel file to your Word document as an embedded object.

Format your budget using APA style.

Use the APA Style Paper Template linked in the Resources. An APA Style Paper Tutorial is also provided to help you in writing and formatting your analysis. Be sure to include:

An APA-formatted title page and reference page. An abstract is not required.

A minimum of five ;properly-formatted citations and references.

Your budget should be 8–10 pages in length, not including the title page and reference page.

Portfolio Prompt: You may choose to save this learning activity to your ePortfolio.