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Feature
Cultivating a Mutual Respect for Data
To reduce costs and improve quality, healthcare organizations are formally pairing finance and clinical leaders to analyze and discuss operational, clinical, and financial data. "When that happens, the results can be really incredible," says Rita Turley, MS, RN. Read the article.
Ask a Nurse Leader
Care Models and the Bottom Line
by Kathleen D. Sanford, RN, MA, DBA, FACHE
Patient care and budgets are affected by the care model your nurses choose. Read the column.
Business School for Clinicians
Finding the "Dark Green" Dollars
From the Institute for Healthcare Improvement
A recent IHI white paper shares some step-by-step advice for how to identify and calculate dark green savings, or hard savings on the bottom line. Read the article.
How We Did It
Quantifying the Financial Implications of Quality Improvements
As shown by these two case studies, financial analysis plays an important role in clinical improvement projects. Integrating sound financial information and analytics into these efforts can help organizations achieve potential cost savings—and help leaders determine how to mitigate the impact of any lost revenue or cost increases.
Labor Budgets
Standardizing Indirect Staffing Hours
by ChrysMarie Suby, RN, MS
Many questions—and frustrations—arise when clinical and finance leaders try to determine how to count various types of staffing hours, such as manager and charge nurse hours. Adopting standardized definitions and classifications can help. Read the article.
Clinician-to-Finance Interpreter
What Terms Stump Your Finance Leaders?
In a recent informal survey, clinical leaders identified some terms and concepts that tend to "stump" their finance colleagues. Read the article.
Staffing Exercise
A Tale of Two Ratios: Calculating RN-to-Patient Ratios
by ChrysMarie Suby, RN, MS
Are nurse and finance leaders speaking the same language when they analyze RN-to-patient ratios? Follow this example for how to analyze these ratios.