Budget for a Community Nursing Home, Essay Example

Executive Summary

This document is a depiction of a program plan that is aimed at ensuring Medicare services are provide for individuals over the age of 65. It highlights the need for Medicare services that involve permanent or partial sheltering for the said individuals. The objective is to ensure that all the said individuals have access to medical care and ensure the overall improvement of social security.

Introduction

In Australia, most recipients of Medicare are usually admitted to nursing homes. These patients usually tend to make plans to return back to their homes, however, it is essential that they maintain community Medicare (KPMG Australia, 2012). This helps ease the strain on their budget and to enable them handle their living expenses and bills. The existence of a community nursing home allows for the medical care and treatment of the aged through permanent and/or temporary residence within the premises of the home. The purpose of this business case is to develop a workable and valid budget for a fully functioning nursing home in Australia, with both permanent and partial residence. Since the community nurses will be involved in the early intervention procedures the help to avert exacerbations for patients that are affected by chronic diseases.

The Case for Change

There is an increasing trend in Australia where the population is slowly ageing over time. The increasing number of ageing individuals within the Australian population calls for an increase in specialized Medicare services, tailored for this population. This cannot be achieved or realized in general and public hospitals (Australia, 2004). As such, there is need for community nursing homes

This has been aggravated by birth control mechanisms that have been employed by the population due to changes in lifestyle owing to increased levels of education. This means that there are older individuals in the community than there are young people. Even though this conditions have not been fully realized, the trend is clearly heading towards that direction.

The program is expected to increase the number of the ageing population having access to Medicare. This will be achieved through the creation of a program with a viable budgetary structure that will keep the program running throughout the year.

This program will be in-tandem with the federal Medicare program that is linked to social security. This federal program is geared towards providing clinical and medical care to individuals over the age of 65 and also those with specific disabilities (Australia, 2004). This program is a four-part strategy by the Australian Federal government, i.e. the program covers 4 specific parts of the medical treatment of individuals over the age of 65. Namely;

• Part 1: Hospitalization charges
• Part 2: Medical insurance
• Part 3: Supplemental insurance that is purchased privately in order to allow access to additional services and through which the Medicare services that are offered in Parts 1 and 2 can be accessed.
• Part 4: Coverage of Prescription drugs(Medicare Australia, 2001)

Benefits of the Proposal:

Stakeholders

• Melbourne Local Council will be providing the necessary land for the construction of the centre
• Federal Government will be providing the necessary certification along with funding to kick-start and maintain the program.
• The local private businesses in Melbourne will provide funding and charitable donations
• Melbourne hospital will be providing some of their medical staff to volunteer and/or work part-time as the program starts

All the stakeholders that have been listed above have consented to their involvement with the program as they all play a role in the kick-starting and continuation of the program

Analysis of the Proposal

Objectives of the Service:

• To implement a new program where individuals above the age of 65 can received medical and clinical care
• To provide shelter for individuals above the age of 65 who cannot take care of themselves
• To provide shelter for individuals over the age of 65 who have chronic terminal illnesses
• To allow and motivate local private businesses to be socially responsible through financial and material support for the program.

Costs

Salary and Wages (S&W) (FC)

Goods and Services (G&S)

Replacements, Maintenance and Repairs (RMR) (VC)

Projected income statement

Breakeven Analysis

The nursing home will break even in the month of November

In the month of November, the nursing home will have $100,000 and $36,000 in expenses. Factoring in the 8,765 deficit on the balance from the previous month, the breakeven point will be in the first day of November. This is because approximating weekly figures:

Daily income generated for October is $33,333.33

Daily expenses incurred for October is $1,200

Deficit carried down from September is 8,765

Therefore breakeven is 33,333.33 – (8,765 + 1,200) = 23,368

Capital Assets

The community nursing centre is expected to have a certain amount of capital assets that are crucial for its successful operations. The following departments have been created to cater for all facets of the community nursing centre.

Medical Department: This department is the biggest in the community nursing centre. It is made up of all medical personnel involved in the diagnosis and treatment of patients. All doctors, nurses and medical assistants fall in this department.

Chemist: this is a support department for the medical department. It provides all the biomedical support. All the chemists fall in this department.

Laboratory: This is a support department for the medical department. It is the investigative wing and all lab technicians fall within this department.

Management: this department deals with the running of the community nursing centre, ensuring all the departments are at optimum functionality. It is in-charge of the co-ordination and planning for the community nursing centre.

Hospitality: this support department is in-charge of the in-patient wing and ensures that all in-patients are taken care of. Nurses also fall under this department.

Capital Assets

The Non-Quantifiable Factors

• The quality of the service
• Accurate construction costs
• The future of the service if other services similar will spread
• The reaction of others in the community towards the service
• Tax rates in the future
• The amount of people accessing the service
• Compensation rates
• If more refurbishment is needed
• Employee motivation
• Average salary increase

The Benefits

Reduced Medicare costs for individuals over the age of 65

Increased corporate social responsibility

Reduced government expenditure on Medicare

Reduced operation costs for the nursing home due to government grants and involvement of various stakeholders.

Risks

Implementation of the Proposal

As identifies by the Change Learning Centre (2012) identifies the process of the management of change is the “sequence of steps or activities that a change management team or project leader would follow to apply change management to a project”. This will help with the process of documenting the change management roles and responsibilities to help the service function successfully.

Phase 1 – Preparing for change (Preparation, assessment and strategy development)

For change management to occur, we need to assess the readiness of the organization by analyzing who are the people being targeted and how much affect can this service have on the homeless people, which will be done through assessments of their history and what we aim to help them with in the future. There will be need to communicate with the employees effectively through conducting meetings and sharing opinions in which will create desire for the employees to be part of the service.

Phase 2 – Managing change (Detailed planning and change management implementation)

The project managers will have to ensure that the appropriate training is applied and help them feel that they can do things themselves and apply their own skills and knowledge. He project is already sponsored by the Federal Government, Melbourne Local Council, the Melbourne Community Hospital and they will help with the succession of the project through the workers and funds applied.

Phase 3 – Reinforcing change (Data gathering)

The project managers will need to get feedback from the employees regarding what is happening and what needs improving as the services provided all collaborates into one goal of aiming to help individuals over the age of 65. We will need to evaluate the success of the project and find areas that need improvement and find gaps that need filling

Activity Projections

The following is an activity projection for ABC Community Nursing Centre

Staff

There will be a total of 56 Staff that will be employed to deal with the direct operations, medical operations, of the community nursing center. The projections for the medical team will be to tend to a minimum of 5 patients a day. However, at any given time, there will be 20 staff on duty as the others will be either, off-call or on holiday. As such these 20 medical staff will be expected to tend to a minimum of 5 patients on a daily. Therefore in a year, the community nursing centre will be expected to tend to 36,500 patients. Mathematically;

20 * 365 * 5 = 36,500

Income

Given the financial projection given in the previous section, there are expected seasonal changes in the number of patients. These are based on given assumptions that are driven by:

Seasonal climatic changes: owing to the changes in the seasons, climatic changes bring with it certain common health complications. For example, during the winter, cases of frost bite and asthma attacks are common. Also during this time, accidents are a common occurrences, as such, the month of December is expected to bring in a larger number of patients. The summer is characterized by an increased number of allergy cases. Such seasonal changes are expected to dictate and influence the number of patients that come into the community nursing center.

References

Australia. (2004). Medicare Plus: The future for Medicare? Canberra: The Committee.

Australia. (2004). Strengthening medicare. Canberra: Australian Government.

Australia., & Medicare Australia. (2012). Medicare safety net thresholds – 2012. Canberra: Dept. of Human Services.

KPMG Australia. (2012). Review of the impact of the new Medicare Levy Surcharge thresholds on public hospitals: Year 3 review report. Sydney: KPMG.

Medicare Australia. (2001). Medicare media release. Greenway: Medicare Australia.

Sammut, J., & Centre for Independent Studies (N.S.W.). (2011). How! not how much: Medicare spending and health resource allocation in Australia. St Leonards: The Centre for Independent Studies.