Health care finance covers a variety of topics and we only briefly touched on them throughout this module. Some topics could be, and are, complete courses. But, to further enhance our understanding of some of the topics for this course, we will discuss questions from a few of the areas.

As I have explained in previous modules that this course is designed to simulate a classroom discussion. As others join in the discussion, you should read what has already been posted and continue on with the discussion from there. We will go through the questions one at a time.

Remember, time goes quickly, so post early!

First, let's start with a question based on your experiences:

1. What has been your experience with developing a budget? Have you created one or managed one as part of your current or previous job position? If you have not used one in a professional setting, have you developed a personal budget? What was important to include and how beneficial was it?

Now applying what you've learned from the readings, let's go through the rest of the discussion together, one question at a time.

2. Why are budgets important to all organizations? What different types of budgets are used?

3. Based on what you have learned about basic hospital finance, what financial factors impact the budget at the administrative level? And at the departmental level? Be sure to include payer mix, service mix, and impact of the Affordable Care Act, type of institution, government, and any other factors that are important. (refer to Figure 1 in the Nuckols, et al article for additional insight) ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3696200/ )

4. Discuss ways quality can be used to create positive financial impact? First, can you think of examples where quality causes a negative financial impact? How could you counter your example to make a positive financial impact?

5. How is working capital important to the healthcare organization of today? Why is it different in health care as opposed to other industries?

.....

A pump/filter system supplies clean fluid to a production process. The system consists of two subsystems in parallel (S1 and S2), to increase reliability. Each subsystem consists of one pump and a filtering element in series. S1 has one filter as the filtering element. The filtering element of S2 has two filters in parallel. Failure rate of each pump is 1.5 per year (failure time exponentially distributed), and of each filter, 2.5 per year (exponentially distributed), when they operate.

a). Draw the reliability block diagram of the pump/filter system.

b). Calculate the reliability of the system for 9 months of operation.

c) Find Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) of the system.

A pump/filter system supplies clean fluid to a production process. The system consists of two subsystems in parallel (S1 and S2), to increase reliability. Each subsystem consists of one pump and a filtering element in series. S1 has one filter as the filtering element. The filtering element of S2 has two filters in parallel. Failure rate of each pump is 1.5 per year (failure time exponentially distributed), and of each filter, 2.5 per year (exponentially distributed), when they operate.

a). Draw the reliability block diagram of the pump/filter system.

b). Calculate the reliability of the system for 9 months of operation.

c) Find Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) of the system.

C...

1. Supreme Cola is a supplier of fountain equipment to restaurants, bars and cafeterias. The fountain equipment is manufactured at their York PA plant site. A national distribution center (DC) for the fountain equipment is also maintained adjacent to the plant. Supreme has one common platform design to which they add various features and accessories to create 10 different product options. The lead time for manufacturing and delivering a batch of products to the distribution center is 2 weeks. They review inventory and order weekly. For product ACola, Supreme uses a Normal distribution with mean 100 and standard deviation 20 to model weekly demand. Demands across weeks are independent. ACola sells for $15,000 and they enjoy a 50% gross margin. The annual holding cost for inventory in the DC is 25% of the product's cost. In the event that a customer order cannot be filled from the warehouse due to an out-of-stock situation, Supreme expedites the manufacture and delivery of the item. It estimates that such expediting increases their cost by $770 per unit.

a. What order upto level should Supreme choose to minimize their inventory for ACola while achieving at least a 99.25% in-stock probability?

b. Supreme uses an order up-to policy with a base stock level equal to 250 for ACola. What is the probability that Supreme will have more than 150 units on order of that product at the start of any given week?

2. An industrial company requires argon gas cylinders for its work. Weekly demand is normally distributed with a mean of 35 and a standard deviation of 15. Demands are independent across weeks. Orders are placed weekly and the lead time to receive an order is 1 week. They want to hold enough cylinders to ensure a 97% in-stock probability. If they use an order up-to model, what base stock level should they implement? (Do not round to an integer value, i.e., leave your response in decimal form.)

3. Radio Shack sells a 32GB flash drive. Weekly demand for the 32GB flash drive in one of their stores is normally distributed with a mean of 3 and a standard deviation of 0.5. The store places orders weekly and there is a one week lead time to receive orders.

a. On average, how many units will the store have on order?

b. Suppose they operate with a base stock level of 7. What in-stock probability would they achieve?

4. A large toy company Mttel currently allows toy retailers to place orders with delivery in 4 weeks. The Gigantic Pocket Monster (Gipokmon) is a new toy that Mttel has introduced. Demand per week for the toy at one of their stores is estimated to be normally distributed with a mean of 25 units and standard deviation of 5 units. Assume TOYS-are-MINE uses the order-up-to model to plan orders and deliveries to this store.

a. Suppose TOYS-are-MINE uses an order-up-to level of 20. After receiving their delivery for this week, they have 2 units on-hand. Last week's order was for 5 units. How many units will they order this week?

b. Again, suppose they use an order-up-to level of 20 for this store. On average, how many units will this store have on-order?

c. Suppose an order-up-to level of 140 is established. What is the resulting in-stock probability?

d. Suppose an order-up-to level of 130 is established. What would be the expected end-of-period on-hand inventory of Gipokmons?