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Rutgers SHP Requirements for Graduation and Course Descriptions

Department of Health Informatics

Health Information Management

BINF5131 - Health Care Finance Systems

Course Description

The course is designed to provide a balance between conceptual and practical knowledge of health care finance in a variety of health care settings. Emphasis is placed on case-based teaching to include: review and analysis of finance systems, preparation of budgets, financial statements and reports, regulation and cost containment, financial analysis and management of health resources. Specific attention is given to recent issues relating to health care finance, rate regulation, hospital reimbursement, hospital accounting, financial ratio analysis, and project evaluation.

Credits/Modes of Instruction

Credits: 3

Lecture presented as MS PowerPoint Presentations
Assignments/Projects (graded written assignments/project submission)
Textbook activities
Canvas Learning System – web-based enhanced
Videos.

Prerequisites

None.

Course Goals and Outcomes:

Goals

To provide an overview of health care finance, and develop a foundation of knowledge and skills particularly related to the principles and methods of accumulating, interpreting, and utilizing financial information in relation to management of health systems. Successful completion of this course will enable student to utilize various principles and models of health care finance, and develop skills in the computational procedures and techniques available for effective management of health care finance. Further, the course will help student understand and interpret information necessary for managers to develop plans, budgets, and reports to establish standards and controls, and to evaluate performance of providers of health care services, and making decisions in a variety of health care settings.

Outcomes

Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to:
Describe the use of financial information in the context of health care management and decision making.
Describe the financial environment of Health Care Organizations: sources of operating revenue, hospital payment systems, rate setting, and Medicare Prospective Payment systems.
Explain basic cost concepts and their applications to departmental and product-line costing.
Discuss the concept and approaches to product costing and cost allocation.
Understand the methods for analyzing cost-volume-profit, and cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses.
Discuss the role of budgeting in relation to various types of budgets, and the budget approval and negotiation processes.
Utilize various cost accounting tools to aid in quality management and decision making.
Discuss the issues, considerations, and alternatives in designing information systems for costing.
Discuss the processes and procedures for strategic financial, operational and corporate planning, and budgeting.