HPA 211Financial Decisions in Health Care Organizations

3 credits · Health Policy and Administration · Penn State

An introduction to financial and economic information to make decisions in health care organizations Healthcare Finance is at the core of issues surrounding quality healthcare delivery. It involves wisely balancing the need to manage/control costs while simultaneously investing in strategic opportunities. This course will present and allow students to examine the major issues involved in finance, budgeting and strategic planning and the unique applications of these in health care organizations. This course is designed to help you understand the basic concepts of finance and financial management. The objective is to have you become knowledgeable of how health care entities organize and report financial data and use that data to make decisions. The course will focus initially on the conceptual framework of basic accounting techniques such as the preparation of financial reports, annual and capital budgeting, cost accounting and analysis of financial statements. The course builds on these basic concepts to provide students a conceptual and practical knowledge of health care finance, which includes sources of funding, revenue, cost determinants, third party payers, and valuations that have an impact on the health care organization. The course is also designed to provide students with a working knowledge of vocabulary, concepts in financial management and strategy that will help them be prepared to plan, create, implement and monitor strategic initiatives within a health care organization. Finally, successful completion of this course should equip the student with the tools necessary to be able to effectively communicate with the finance professionals in a health care organization regarding financial decisions being made by that organization.