FIN211/HCA211: Health Care Finance

SYLLABUS:

Course Description:  Managerial aspects of financial analysis.  Includes analysis of financial statements, costs, capital projects, and working capital; Medicare, Medicaid, changes and rate setting under reimbursement schedules; budgeting, return on investment methodology, forecasting, and strategic planning. Pre-requisite: Financial Accounting.

Instructor Biography:  Dr. Michael Guth is a health care researcher based in Oak Ridge, TN.  His current research comprises inefficiencies in health care insurance, pharmaceutical pricing, and best available treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, osteoporosis, and high cholesterol.  He has developed and/or taught more than twenty on-line courses at more than a dozen educational institutions in the areas of economics, finance, business strategy, business law, politics, and criminal justice. Potential students are encouraged to view his web page at http://michaelguth.com/economist.htm and click on some of the papers and articles he has written.

 

Returning Messages:  In general, I will respond to e-mail messages within 24 hours, but usually you can expect a response sooner than that.  Therefore, students should check back shortly for a response after they send me a message.  I will return long distance phone calls from students only if the matter is urgent.  For both urgent and non-urgent matters, students are asked to communicate with me through e-mail if at all possible.

 

Learning Outcomes:  Upon successful completion of this course students will be able to:

1.      Summarize the four main elements of financial management and know how to structure the information flow to make a financial management system work.

2.      Explain the differences in and know how to group sources of health care revenue (Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, uninsured payments) for planning and control.

3.      Illustrate distinctions between expense and cost, and explain where to place individual items under these categories.

4.      Demonstrate how to distinguish between direct and indirect costs, ethical and unethical costs billed to patients, fixed versus variable or semi-variable costs, and product versus period costs.

5.      Critique a budget using common sizing and trend analysis tools and the key role played by assumptions in budget forecasts.

6.      Effectively use present values, discounted cash flows, internal rate of return, return on investment (ROI), payback period, liquidity ratios, solvency ratios, and profitability ratios in their daily work activities.

7.      Explain the use of the Pareto rule and apply the financial principles learned in this course to a global problem facing health care.

 

 

1.  REQUIRED:

1. Our course textbook is Baker and Baker, Health Care Finance:  Basic Tools for Nonfinancial Managers, 2004, Jones and Bartlett Publishers, ISBN 0-7637-3349-0.
2. Financial Calculator:  found on an Internet web page, or purchased through an electronics store.
3. Access to Internet for assignments and for study tools.

2.  CLASS POLICIES:

I will try to give you hints throughout the course that will assist you with problems.  The Internet will be a valuable research and question-answering-tool for you in this course.  Although some of the problems in this course are challenging, you will find the Internet contains helpful references or explanations for techniques with which you might not be familiar.   However, there are several policies that will be followed:

• This syllabus is subject to change based on student progress with the reading and homework assignments.  Please see the Announcements section of the course web page for any changes in assignments or due dates.
• No make-up exams or early exams will be given, except under extreme circumstances. In addition, late assignments will be graded and returned, but will not receive credit.  Students in this course will have multiple weeks to prepare answers for the mid-term exam and final exam. 
• Attendance will be required according to COSC guidelines for online courses.  Students are responsible for all course content and assignments whether they check the course web page routinely or not.
• Students are expected to complete the course on time; there are no extensions in online courses.
• A week in this course begins on a Monday and will end on the following Sunday.

 

 3.            ACADEMIC HONESTY

 

In Charter Oak’s current Student Handbook under Section 2:  Proscribed Conduct it states:

Charter Oak State College may discipline a student in the following situations:

For academic dishonesty, which shall in general mean conduct, which has as its intent or effect the false misrepresentation of a student’s academic performance including but not limited to: (a) cheating on examination; (b) plagiarizing, including submission of another’s ideas or papers as one’s own; (c) stealing or having unauthorized access to examinations; (d) falsifying records, transcripts, test scores or other data or (being represented by another individual for all or part of a distance learning course.

 

By registering for a Distance Learning course, a student attests that all assignments submitted and examinations completed are the work of the enrolled student.  Dishonesty will result in an “F” in the course and may incur other disciplinary action for Charter Oak State College students including dismissal from the College. 

 

4.  GRADING:

 

Academic Support

Tutoring

Charter Oak State College offers free online tutoring in several subjects including mathematics and writing. To take advantage of these Online Tutoring Services email Sue Israel, Distance Learning Administrator, at sisrael@charteroak.edu after week 1. She will provide you with the information and the instructions you need to get started. 

 

Library Access

iCONN.  The Connecticut Digital Library is a project of the Connecticut State Library and the Department of Higher Education.  It provides access over the World Wide Web to a wide selection of databases and other electronic resources.  Charter Oak’s distance learning students will have access to this database.  When students register for online and video courses, they will receive a barcode to verify usage of this educational resource from their home or office computer.  Students will find the website at www.iCONN.org.   Click on “Access from Off-Campus”.  Then click on the title of the database that you wish to use.  Enter your barcode number. 

Class Etiquette:

1.             Respect fellow classmates. There is a great deal that we can learn from each other, but this can not happen if students feel uncomfortable in class about speaking up (afraid that their ideas will be treated harshly or not "listened to" respectfully) or are worried about what will be said to them or about them once they do speak up. Make sure you do everything you can to make our classroom culture a comfortable learning environment for everyone in the class. We may have people from many different backgrounds in this class and people with many different levels of academic preparation. You should all feel comfortable and make each other comfortable with discussing the issues.

2.         Use an appropriate tone of voice. Say what you need to say, but say it in an appropriate tone of voice--one that is respectful and calm. Sarcasm, heavily judgmental or confrontational comments break down good will and create an inhospitable classroom atmosphere. Since this is course that deals with ethics, among other issues, this is particularly critical.  Bullying comments are inappropriate and unacceptable in this class. This is most important in a virtual classroom, where tone of voice is often difficult to "read" from the language on screen (although the use of emotions helps reduce this difficulty in some ways).  If you are able to be funny without offending others feel free to do so but please be careful.

3.         Take responsibility for making this class successful.  I am the facilitator/instructor but class discussion will be largely the “work” of you.  Ask yourself what you can do during each class discussion to move the class forward in a positive way.  I may ask a class member to assume responsibility to lead particular discussions but that does not excuse the remainder of the class from vigorous participation.

ASSIGNMENTS:

Homework assignments are due at the end of the week for the assigned reading.  Assignments will also be posted to the Blackboard Web page for this course.   Students should turn in their assignments through the digital drop box on Blackboard.  The homework assignments will be graded on a pass-fail basis subject to the following condition:  to receive a passing grade on the homework, the student must turn in answers that merit an A or B letter grade.  If a student does not complete the homework in a satisfactory manner, the assignment will be rejected and the student will have to resubmit corrected answers if he or she wants credit for that assignment.  Students will have only one opportunity to resubmit their homework assignment.  

The midterm and final exams will be graded with letter grades.  These exams will be open book and posted to the Blackboard Assignment page.  I will give you an answer key to each of the exams after all students have turned in their work.  The homework will usually be graded within 48 hours, and the exams will be graded by the end of the week in which they are due.  Students can find their grades in the electronic gradebook in Blackboard.

ASSIGNMENTS: 

This area will contain all of the assignments for each course.  Please check back frequently for updates.

Week 1:   Chapters One, Two, and Three:

 

• Read  Chapter 1 – Background; Chapter 2 – Introduction to Health Care Finance; and Chapter 3 – What Does the Health Care Manager Need to Know?
• Read the lecture notes (Power Point slides) for these chapters located at the following URL: http://healthadmin.jbpub.com/healthcarefinance 
• Respond to the discussion board questions being careful to keep your responses under the proper thread.
• Complete homework assignment for this week by the end of this week.

Week 2:  Chapters Four and Five: 

• Read Chapter 4 – Revenues (Inflow) and Chapter 5 – Costs (Outflow).
• Read the lecture notes (Power Point slides) for these chapters located at the following URL: http://healthadmin.jbpub.com/healthcarefinance 
• Respond to the discussion board questions being careful to keep your responses under the proper thread.
• Complete homework assignment for this week by the end of this week.

 

Week 3:  Chapters Six and Seven:

• Read Chapter 6 – Cost Classifications and Chapter 7 – Cost Behavior and Break-Even Analysis.
• Read the lecture notes (Power Point slides) for these chapters located at the following URL: http://healthadmin.jbpub.com/healthcarefinance 
• Respond to the discussion board questions being careful to keep your responses under the proper thread. 
• Complete homework assignment for this week by the end of this week.

Week 4:  Midterm Exam (covering Chaps. 1 – 7) due at the end of this week; Chapters Eight and Nine:

• Read Chapter 8 – Staffing: The Manager’s Responsibility; Chapter 9 – Comparative Data and Forecasts.
• Read the lecture notes (Power Point slides) for these chapters located at the following URL: http://healthadmin.jbpub.com/healthcarefinance 
• Respond to the discussion board questions being careful to keep your responses under the proper thread.
• Complete homework assignment for this week by the end of this week.

Week 5:  Chapters Ten and Eleven 

·         Read Chapter 10 – Budgeting and Variance Analysis; Chapter 11 – Time Value of Money.

• Read the lecture notes (Power Point slides) for these chapters located at the following URL: http://healthadmin.jbpub.com/healthcarefinance 
• Respond to the discussion board questions being careful to keep your responses under the proper thread.
• Complete homework assignment for this week by the end of this week.

Week 6:  Chapters Twelve, Thirteen, and Fourteen 

·         Read Chapter 12 – Reporting; Chapter 13 – Financial and Operating Ratios as Performance Measures; Chapter 14 – Other Types of Performance Measures.

• Read the lecture notes (Power Point slides) for these chapters located at the following URL: http://healthadmin.jbpub.com/healthcarefinance 
• Respond to the discussion board questions being careful to keep your responses under the proper thread. 
• Complete homework assignment for this week by the end of this week.

Week 7:  Case Studies:  Chapters 15, 16, and 17: 

• Read Chapters 15, 16, 17.  Each of these three chapters contain a series of mini-case studies based on articles published in the Journal of Health Care Finance. 
• Respond to the discussion board questions being careful to keep your responses under the proper thread.
• Write a 600-word article applying the financial principles you have learned in this course to a health care issue on a macro national or global scale.  See the examples posted by the instructor as to style of these short articles.  Use the case studies in Chaps. 15 – 17 as possible ideas for the subject of your article that you will expand to capture the big picture view.

Week 8:  Final Exam covering Chaps. 8 - 17 

• Turn in your final exam by Sunday at 6 PM Eastern time.