HMP 587 Health Care Financial Management

Notes on Filling out the Statistics Budget

1) Download, rename and save a copy of the “Statistics Budget Workbook”. This is what you will be filling in. Make sure you save changes when you are done and have access to this at the next class (so save on H: drive). Delete any prior copies of the stats budget you have (as its been changed).

2) You can also download the copy of “Statistics Budget Example” in which I have filled out the required parts that you can use as a general example.

3) You need fill out all the yellow areas of the statistics budget. These include clinic operation hours, staff FTE and staff # (bodies). (Note: I fixed the square footage formula so it calculates from your staffing choices – you don’t need to do this). Do not change or move anything on the spreadsheet other than filling in the yellow highlight areas. You can put notes or other things in unused areas but not where any number or text is currently.

4) Start by filling in the clinic operation hours using military time.

5) Next put in your assigned number of visits per 40 hour week. The first row in class was assigned 400, second row 600, and third row 800.

6) Look at the Minimum FTE Needed table (starts line 111). This has been modified so that it shows only the minimum that you staff that you could need in each area rounded to .25 FTE units. You can’t go below these (and may have to given hiring rules that staff have to either .5, .75 or 1 FTE) but you can go above – that is part of your choice. I have added a combined MD/NP/RN/PA minimum FTE line that should help figuring out whether you have enough of those staff combined to cover the different visit types. Remember that the CHWs are optional (so true minimum is 0) and the “minimum” line is how many you need to have if you want make sure that all clients have access to a CHW.

7) Fill in your FTE choices in the “FTE You Choose” table. Remember that they have to increase or stay the same as you move across the quarters. I have augmented the hiring rules to include that staff have to stay at the FTE level you hire them at. So if you have .75 FTE in Qtr 1 that means you’ve created a .75 FTE position for the whole year. To the right of this table is a new FTE check table. When you have finished making FTE choices each of the numbers in this table must be zero or greater (otherwise you’ve undershot your minimum). If you have negative you need to go back and increase the appropriate FTE. There are no strictly “wrong” choices as long as you meet your minimums.

8) Fill in the “Actual Staff #” table which is the count of staff bodies that your FTE choices represent (e.g. 1 FTE is two “bodies” if it represents two .5 FTE positions). Remember the rule that staff can only be .5, . 75 or 1 FTE and that when you hire a staff at that FTE it has to stay that way throughout. The most direct way to do this is look at the full capacity or Qtr 4 FTE you chose (both are the same as you reach full capacity in Qtr 4) and decide how you want to staff that. If its 3.5 FTE you may want to hire three 1.0 FTE and one .5 FTE staff. Then given that decision look back at your quarterly FTE choices and decide the order in which you would hire that meet your FTE choices over time. You may find that your initial FTE choices make some staffing # choices impossible or limited e.g. if you said that you’d only have .5 FTE in Qtr 1 then you have to be (permanently) hiring a .5 FTE person at that point or if you choose 1.25 FTE in a qtr then that means you’d have to a .5 FTE and a .75 FTE staff in that quarter. Not that likely but if so you need to adjust one or the other to fit. I’d suggest that if you have decided on a staffing number and pattern that you make your FTE choices fit with that. Note that you need to decide on (and give a position name to) up to four internal consult positions. Given that your minimum staff position is .5 FTE this may well require to hire more FTE then you might have originally planned as internal consult minimums could be met with just one or two staff in most cases.

9) In considering 5) & 6) above remember that beyond meeting your minimums there are no explicit “right” or “wrong” choices. This is a place to consider the three concepts of mutually beneficial trade, stewardship and conservativeness and how they might work together (and/or against each other) to guide decisions. Here mutual beneficial trade is about producing a service that meets your vision of creating “value” for consumers and community (the external part) as well as creating a working environment that is reasonable for your staff (the internal part). Stewardship is about balancing staffing choices so to create a stable, sustainable and effective organization now and into the future. This could say pit interests of specific staff (e.g. desire for part-time or full-time work) against the interests of the whole (i.e. what is needed to make the whole work versus what individuals might prefer). Similarly, conservativeness here would most likely focus on what we really “need” in terms of resources versus what we might “want”. How many staff above the minimum we “need”, how many (optional) part time positions, how many different internal consults, and whether/how many CHWs we choose are all costly decisions that create some tension in terms of how much resources we really “need” in order to create the value we “want”.