Assignment: Financial Risk Analysis for this Conversion.
Finance is the study of how businesses allocate money over time. With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, it is posited that financial management will become more complicated. Do you agree or disagree? Explain the rationale for your response.
I believe that financial management will become more complicated as the years progress; we have to factor in technological changes that also impact the healthcare industry. The implantation of the Affordable Care Act has had a major impact on healthcare organizations financial management. The ACA was projected to increase health care coverage for aver 30 million people. By congress enacting this national law, it inadvertently unleashed an unsurmountable number of newly insured patients which flooded an already fragile delivery system. The healthcare industry has had a shortage in their workforce for decades and therefore, was unprepared for this influx (Anderson, 2014).
Moreover, the ACA requires major funding and reimbursement reductions that included more the 700 million in Medicare spending meaning that for non-profit hospitals Medicare reimbursement would be reduced over the next decade by more than $150 million. If the reimbursement scheme was based on a set amount to every health institution, difficulties in financial management would be limited. Moreover, the cost of care will also be impacted by this change in the reimbursement scheme as the financial managers in the hospitals will be forced to plan for different approaches that are directly associated with the cost of care(Evensen, 2012).
The hospital financial management may also be forced to cut down their expenditures so as to meet the requirements that have been set by the ACA. This is likely to result to the hospitals planning to hire more staff and purchasing the latest technologies at the expense of investing their finances in new buildings. Therefore, meeting the expectations of both the act and the consumers will have an impact in the financial management (Anderson, 2014).
References:
Anderson, A. (2014, March). The Impact of the Affordable Care Act on the Health Care Workforce. The Heritage Fundation.
Evensen, J. (2012, September 13). challenges for revenue cycle management. Healthcare Management.