NURSING LEADERSHIP AND FINANCE

The nursing leader is responsible for the budget process that is a guiding framework to the financial management of facilities. He not only has to be fully equipped with financial management skills but also should be able to coordinate it with the nursing units within the hospital. An efficient nursing leader is able to prepare a proper budget and lias with other hospital units and department to ensure financial health. In a world where profit maximization is the goal of every going concern it is imperative that a nurse leader is able to balance the costs and revenues associated with healthcare in order to operate a financially sound facility. Keywords: nurse leader, budget, facility. The revenues consider charges that bring in money through inpatient hospitalization, consultations and other patient procedures.

Expenses on the other hand deal with costs accruing to healthcare facilities due to staff, supplies and other services that support the nursing unit to run smoothly. The importance of nurse leaders to provide not only as reasonable but fair operational budget ensures that the firm is able to support crucial activities to the self-development of personnel. This is because the success of firms is moving towards focus on the employees. A well-motivated workforce is able to achieve their activities with utmost efficiency enabling hospitals to meet their quality assurance standards. The reimbursement of healthcare costs is steadily moving away from volume related to performance related. This has of course affected the healthcare system as nurse leaders have to ensure that the quality of service within the hospitals is high and effective (West et al 2016).

The change in reimbursement has forced nurses to be prepared for shortfalls in the budget by cutting down on costs that may include staffing, equipment and other costs. This is usually the first line of action so as to reduce expenses and channel the finance saved on other important outlets. The budget development process is a time-consuming activity that is important for the financial health of a facility and as such a nurse leader should dedicate his time and skills to ensure it is duly dealt with. Having this model ensures that the Nurse leader is able to make modifications to the minimum staff requirements with ease and as such any changes can be made without undergoing unnecessary difficulties. The nurse leader should also be able to cut down on costs in other aspects like equipment and services to allocate to the minimum staff requirement costs, this is called burden shifting.

There are other budgeting approaches other than the departmental budget that falls under the bottom-up-approach, where lower organization levels prepare their budgets in line with the overall organizational budgets. This approach is good as it maintains individual goals of different departments that they can focus on and be able to work towards an improved performance in line with the facility goals (Strickler et al. The up-down-budget approach involves laying the overall budget of a firm as a basis for all other sub budgets. Healthcare is not only a business, but a means to a very necessary end. A healthy class of people will be able to be better productive, leading to the search for a better world being more practical. References Fast, O.