Happy Holiday Paper

Happy Hospital Paper

Nicole Rochell Jackson

ACC/HC561- Accounting in a Health Care Environment

December 18, 2011

Tammie Holland

Happy Hospital Paper

It is known that Happy Hospital wants to start planning for a new fiscal year. Happy Hospital prepared a financial statement from the previous year and it is there so that it can be compared with the upcoming year financial needs. Happy Hospital is a 115 bed community hospital, which is not for profit facility that has a long standing tradition of providing quality care to the community. At Happy, the patients are seen regardless of their ability to pay for their service. Presently, Happy Hospital assets are approximately $12.5 million, with the vast majority in accounts receivable, compared to $4.3 million in current liabilities (Finkler & Ward, 2006). The paper will discuss how Happy Hospital could use budgets and performance reports in the decision making process and how ethics must influence managements accounting decisions. Lastly, this paper will address what accounting information is most relevant for Happy Hospital to consider when making decisions.

The CEO of Happy Hospital shows that he understands that the company needs to automate health information management systems with a goal in mind of electronic medical records system being implemented in the organization. The company is trying to push the management to decide on what vendor to award the contract. This is so that the cost accounting reports will be made available for management to decide if they should proceed with investing in an automated system. Budgets and performance reports will allow the CEO to calculate future performance, meet short-term and long-term goals of the company. Both reports work together to help the CEO and management to identify and deal with potential bottle-necks or constraints before becoming major problems (Jackson, Sawyers, & Jenkins, 2006). The budget and performance report would mainly be used...