IHF-HFMA Business of Health Care® EMR Version

The IHF-HFMA Business of Health Care® EMR Version is an online healthcare finance training for Eastern Mediterranean Region – EMR.

Hospital financial management is the planning, organizing, directing and evaluating of the financial activities in a hospital. Financial realities play a central role in many, if not all, decisions associated with today’s health systems. It’s well informed that the role of financial management in improving and strengthening hospital care is critical.

This online course is designed for people who work in hospital professions but have not had a basic education on finance. Although each country has its own specific financial and accounting systems and management, the course provides participants with an easy-to-understand way of the fundamentals of financial management in practice.

Learning Objectives:

The following are course objectives included in the IHF-HFMA Business of Health Care® EMR Version program.

After this program, you’ll be able to:

• Identify the current structure and trends of healthcare financial system and determine the impact of healthcare reform on healthcare delivery and payment
• Determine an organization’s financial health using financial performance ratios, key financial statements, and financial analysis tools
• Describe how financial strategic planning influences budgeting, costs, and pricing for healthcare services
• Identify the components of the revenue cycle, including patient engagement, billing, and collections
• Identify inefficiencies in hospital systems and development of public-private partnerships
• Describe new models for collaboration among healthcare providers, physicians, and health plans
• Define the trend toward population health in future healthcare delivery models

Course Outline:

• Course 1: Healthcare Finance: The Big Picture: This course presents a big picture overview of the health financial system in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR), and of the evolution of healthcare services delivery and payment. It highlights the healthcare transformations including the shift from volume to value, quality, payment satisfaction, competition on costs and the evolution of the payment system. Attention is given to the changing roles of (non-financial) managers in healthcare finance. We will also introduce you to Universal Health Coverage, as a desirable goal for all EMR countries.
• Course 2: Financial Accounting Concepts: The purpose of financial accounting is to summarize financial activity in a business in the financial statements. Accurate, complete, responsible financial accounting is an absolute must for maintaining stability in a business. In the EMR, most hospital managers have a clinical background without formal training on hospital management, particularly financial topics. The principles and practices supporting financial accounting are presented in the Financial Accounting Concepts course. It provides a clear description of fundamental accounting principles and terminology that finance professionals need to know, a clear analysis of provider, payer and physician group financial statements, as well as management and financial reports used in health care.
• Course 3: Cost Analysis Principles: Cost reduction is a central goal of healthcare reform, and cost analysis a critical activity in healthcare organizations. Used appropriately, it assists managers in making decisions in areas like pricing, revenue planning, setting standard cost, capital investment and marketing decisions. Course 3 addresses cost management, traditional cost-funding methods, activity based costing, price setting and cost analysis.
• Course 4: Strategic Financial Issues: Healthcare organizations routinely engage in strategic planning – a process that applies product review and innovation, market analysis and operational planning to develop business strategies that have a greater chance for success. Course 4 explores how finance, financial goals and financial performance play an integral role in the strategic financial planning and decision-making.
• Course 5: Managing Financial Resources: Financial Resource Management is the efficient deployment of fiscal resources. Despite sufficient fiscal space, there are huge disparities in public health spending between governments in the EMR, with an average share of health expenditure from total government expenditure of 8.7% in 2017. With close to 80% of hospital beds relying on public funds, the challenge of meeting the demands of today’s healthcare environment requires the allocation of financial resources in an effective and thoughtful manner. Course 5 provides a practical overview of productively managing financial resources. The core concerns of reimbursement, capital, long-term financial planning, metrics and data are examined.
• Course 6: Looking to the Future: Healthcare finance professionals are working in a rapidly evolving business environment, including growing public-private partnerships. This final course explores the future of the industry and empowers the learner to plan for that future by exploring key business drivers such as finance and clinical alignment, population health management and the power of data and business intelligence. The course also focuses on the main sources of inefficiencies in the EMR and proposes actions to overcome them.

General Program Information