Dunham-Taylor & Pinczuk, (2015) describes a budget variance as the difference between the amount a nurse manager has budgeted or baseline amount of expense or revenue, and the actual amount that will be spent. The budget variance can be considered favorable when the actual revenue is higher that the budget or when the actual expense is lower than the budget.

Types of variances include variable volume or units of service, revenue, man power, information about salary expense, benefit expense, and nonsalary expense. Expense Budget puts a limit to the amount estimated as expenditure to be acquired in the coming fiscal year. Salaries are normally the largest expense for any cost center. Salaries are broken down into the same categories as man-hours. The percentage of variance in salaries not only reflects the number of man-hours used to care for a particular amount of patients, but it also reflects the skill mix providing the care. Benefit expense include retirement, group health, flex benefits, and Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) (Dunham-Taylor & Pinczuk, 2015) . This is considered the employee’ portion of the cost for health insurance that can include dental, vision, life insurance and disability. Nonsalary expenses mainly includes the purchase of service professionals, and non-chargeable services and supplies that cannot be charged to the patient such as ink, paper (.

Nurse Manager’s must understand that when there is a negative variance of the budget reporting it is necessary to establish the cause. An increased use of sick time requires additional nurse hours to staff the unit and so the manager is essentially paying twice for the same hours, which would lead to a negative variance. Variance reporting becomes a valuable tool for reviewing budgets and planning, examining deviations, as well as controlling budgets verses actual costs (Bragg, 2019).

References

Bragg, S. (2019) Budget Variance Retrieved from https://www.accountingtools.com/articles/what-is-a-budget-variance.html

A Budget Variance refers to the measures utilized by healthcare organizations, government, and various corporations to quantify the difference with budgeted and actual figures. The three influences of budget variance include errors, internal business changes and unmet expectations.

The four major budgets of a health care organization includes a statistic budget, an operating budget, a cash budget and a capitol budget

A statistic budget enables the amount of service that will provided, usually listed by payor. An operating budget is a combination of two budgets developed using the accrual basis The cash budget demonstrates all the anticipated cash inflow and outflow. And the capital budget summarizes the anticipated budget for the year.

Present-day nursing calls for nurses to function within the full capacity of their role, this entails clinical nurse leaders taking on higher responsibilities within their organizations which include unit budgeting and financial operation of the organization (Strickler, 2016). Chief financial officers have learned the importance of working closely with nurse leaders as they have come to understand the integral role nurse leaders play in developing budgets that will enable safe patient care additionally to enable successful patient outcomes.

In 2015 the United States spent $3.2 trillion or $9990 per person on healthcare, the united states ranks first in the globe per-capita health spending (Tran, 2017). It is critical that clinical nurse leaders understand the importance of variance reporting as this will help assist in clinicals leaders planning patient activities, staff incentives which include raises additional continuing educational resources. Various reporting is a valuable tool for nurse leaders, as this will help in coordinating realistic budget plans and goals that align with the organizations goals and objectives.

Reference

Stickler,J (2016) Developing nurse leaders from within. Nursing 2020 Critical Care. Vol 11 (5) pp 15-17. doi: 10.1097/01.CCN.0000490963.34675.dc

Point-of-Care Testing (PoCT) is an Abbott portable clinical analyzer that test patients’ blood at the point of care, usually at the patients’ bedside or wherever care is being given. This analyzer is a technological device designed to be utilized for critical care testing such as blood gases, blood chemistry, hematology, and blood coagulation (Martin, 2010). To utilize this analyzer requires one cartridge and a small sample of blood. This analyzer helps to reduce the need for additional testing, is less expensive, and gives quick results so treatment can commence immediately. After the passage of Hurricane Dorian, we were blessed with two of these analyzers in the ICU. Fortunately, I was trained how to use this device from a previous job; so I was able to train the staff in the ICU to use this analyzer.

I was given two days to train all the staff. I looked up the characteristics on the machine and explained it to the staff and demonstrated how to use the machine. I requested feedback and any questions they might have had and those were answered as best I could or I followed up with the manufacture. Return demonstration was done to ensure that all staff members were familiar with how to use the analyzer. I offered my support in the event they were uncomfortable with using the machine.

Master’s Essential V best suits the usage of this technological device, as it allows advanced level nurses to convey and facilitate the optimization of patient care while utilizing communication to fellow staff members to incorporate and organize care (AACN, 2011).

References

Abbott (n.d). I-Stat 1 A Point-Of-Care Blood Analyzer That Delivers Lab Quality Blood Results in Minutes Retrieved from https://www.pointofcare.abbott/int/en/offerings/istat/istat-handheld

American Association of Nursing (AACN), (2011, March 21). The essentials of master’s education in nursing Retrieved from http://www.aacn.nche.edu/education-resources/MasterEssentials11.pdf