In our industry, budgeting is a very important activity that involves deep concentration by the healthcare administrator, along with significant collaboration and participation by the clinician leaders as well. Even with all of these great minds working together, the team will never be able to forecast a perfect budget that is always 100% correct.
As a result, variance analysis is conducted by the organizational leaders to not only project future revenues/expenses, but to also understand the effect of variance upon previous projected volumes and other workload. Therefore, some things are assumed, or even taken for granted when developing a budget for a future financial period. One could even say that specific budget types are generated based upon prior financial data (financial statements), ceteris paribus.
What is ceteris paribus, and discuss how it fits into the budgeting activities mentioned above. Finally, also be sure to discuss what specific budget activity you believe ceteris paribus to be clearly utilized in.