Care Group is a coalition of Boston hospitals. In FY1998, it incurred an operating loss of over $34 million, and a decline in its equity of more than $104 million. This contrasts with very positive performance in the previous two years. The goal is to determine why this happened.
The chair of the anesthesiology is attempting to develop a compensation plan that will reward the physicians in his department for their performance in clinical, teaching, and research activities. His efforts are impeded by a variety of conflicting incentives.
Discusses some issues for instructors to consider when teaching on-line classes. Covers the topics of discussion questions, "blackboard" plan, document sharing, use of spreadsheets and frameworks, the role of teams, and grading.
Discusses the link between marketing and operations, which, when combined, constitute a way to "manage" customers. Also links these activities to other processes, such as management control.
Similar to Case TCG121. The department of neurology within a department of medicine is attempting to build its budget. The chair of medicine has asked the division head to give him a business plan, which is presented in the case. The chief must decide how credible the plan is. To fully understand what is going on, the budget-building (and business plan) effort must be taken down to the individual provider level.
Outsourcing is a strategy used by many municipalities in an effort to provide high quality public services at a low cost. The underlying theory is that by having an external vendor provide a service, the city or town can take advantage of the vendor's experience and economies of scale. The result will be comparable or better quality services than could be provided by the municipality itself, at a reduced cost to the taxpayers, while still allowing the vendor to earn a profit. Unfortunately, theory and reality sometimes diverge. This note discusses why this can happen and what can be done about it.
First discusses full cost accounting, its uses, and the managerial choices involved in setting up a full-cost accounting system. Then discusses differential cost accounting, addressing the nature of costs and the subject of cost-volume-profit (CVP) analysis. Then examines a variety of special considerations that can complicate CVP analysis. Finally, discusses when differential costs, rather than full costs, should be used in an analysis, and identifies some of the complications involved in using them.
Discusses several aspect of the formal control structure of nonprofit organizations, distinguishing among the responsibility center structure, the program structure, the information structure, and a variety of administrative factors and behavioral considerations including the importance of addressing cooperation and conflict in a bureaucracy.
This case addresses the transition from cash to accrual accounting. It also demonstrates some of the difficulties in comparing one firm's data with industry averages.
When deciding where to locate a new facility, a firm needs to consider the financial health of the municipality where its activities will take place. Unless it sites its facility in a financially viable community, a firm is putting a substantial investment at risk. Despite the importance of this issue, many firms pay insufficient attention to a municipality's financial condition. Instead, they focus on matters such as the tax rate, the quality of the school system, or the absence of regulatory constraints. All of these features are important, but unless a municipality is financially healthy, they can evaporate before a company has attained its expected return on investment. There are 5 financial statements and 10 financial ratios that can be used to create a financial health template, which can help a firm to assess a municipality's financial strength, or its counterpart financial weakness. The template goes beyond the debt-repayment focus of credit rating agencies to matters such as financial autonomy, cash flows, and borrowing capacity. We use data from three cities-Barcelona, Dublin, and Detroit (pre- and post-bankruptcy)-to demonstrate the template's ability to facilitate comparisons among cities that are in different countries and that use different accounting systems.
This is a relatively simple ABC case designed to assist students to master the concept. The company is manufacturing computers and needs to determine prices for different models
Supplement to case TCG051. This is a follow on case to El Conejo (A). The budget has not been achieved, and the manager must figure out why. There are several relevant variances
This is a pretty basic case on financial accounting, with a tricky twist. The organization needs to reconstruct its financial statements, and the retained earnings account needs to be adjusted
The chief of dermatology at a major medical center is attempting to convince senior management to develop an outpatient treatment center for psoriasis. Doing so will require a capital investment, but will free up some inpatient beds for other patients.
This is an ABC case that focuses on Stage 2 of the process. Costs have been allocated to mission centers and the chief gynecology must now determine how to "attach" the department's costs to the various procedures it conducts.
An integrated delivery system (IDS) is attempting to develop a clinical pathway for colon cancer. To do so, it must coordinate the activities of several hospital departments, and also manage the relationship between physician practices and the various hospitals in the IDS
Based on articles published in both Healthcare Financial Management and the International Journal for Health Planning and Management, this note discusses the challenges facing healthcare organizations in the 21st century, and the nature of the strategic choices they must make.