Summary of Article Managing Healthcare Budgets in Times of Austerity - Paper Example

The article Managing Healthcare Budgets in Times of Austerity: The Role of Program Budgeting and Marginal Analysis provides an insight into the allocation of resources especially fund in the healthcare sector (Mitton, Dionne, & Donaldson, 2014). In this case, the authors highlight the main challenges that face the healthcare industry in times of crises. High performance in the healthcare sector is as a result of paying attention to priority setting. However, the authors note that there is little that has been done in this area. Therefore, many of the healthcare organizations have resorted to techniques that hinder priority setting leading to poor decision-making. Therefore, the authors point out that the use of contingency funding should be dealt with by saving surplus revenue from the healthcare organizations. Strong leadership and management teams are the key factors to achieving success in project management through proper decision making.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Critique

Notably, I concur with the authors by being keen to note that strong leadership is the key to proper decision making. However, they fail to point out that the expertise and dedication of these leaders is what matters. There can be strong leaders but an additional aspect of passion and morality is needed in achieving success when managing fiscal matter within the healthcare organization. It is advisable that the employees should be included in the decision-making process because they can provide possible ways of creating rich revenue sources and a forecast of any fiscal crises.

Summary of article Increasing Accountability through Performance-Based Budgeting

The article, Increasing Accountability through Performance-Based Budgeting focuses on the impacts of apparent economic and political events on taxpayers to devote their interest on budgeting. Timothy, Marcus, Robert and Tammy emphasizes on Jake Tapper of the ABC News which analyzes Office of Management and Budgeting (OMB) of U.S.A. The authors describe how the Army Medical Command influenced government budgeting to increase accountability through Performance-Based adjustment model (West, Cronk, Goodman, & Waymire, 2010). The managers are accounted to monitor the budgeting and control of funds and introduce an increment in the traditional budgeting. From the article, it is evident that the managers faced conflicts with the increment budget approach. The major challenge was obtaining enough funding level for increasing accountability. The article gives the overview of how the Regional Pilot Study introduced MEDCOM to influence incremental funding process. Performance-based budgeting program was introduced to increase the quality and quantity of the budgeting. From the report, the performance-based adjustment model later increased the accountability.

Critique

It is evident that the project had a major impact in the USA and globally. I agree with authors since, in 2006, there had been a greater achievement of over 139 percent increase in accountability in the US army. The US navy implemented this approach due to this achievement in accountability.

Summary of the Article Managing Accountability Research through Budgeting Practice and Performance in small Healthcare Business

The article, Managing Accountability Research through Budgeting Practice and Performance in small Healthcare Business describes how the textual factors relate to budgeting practice in management control system of an organization (King & Walace, 2010). The authors, Robyn King, Peter Clarkson and Sandra Wallace give the example of Australian primary Healthcare. The authors propose that there is no common MCS which fits in all organization. The compatibility of textual factors with budgeting practice is the genesis of MCS to fit in an organization. MCS influences behaviors and practices which are vital for organizations decisions of budgeting. The authors focus on how the Australian primary healthcare budgeting is influenced by the MCS. The Australian primary healthcare offers unique services due to better MCS in its organization. Determining this budgeting practice is based on the size of business, structure and the previous environmental uncertainty.

Critique

The authors provide genuine research since most of the medical sectors have developed this approach of Australian primary Healthcare. It is important to note that from experimental settings, there have been advantageous impacts of the MCS. I agree with authors argument since there has been an increase in economic incentives in budgeting for the businesses which adapts the Australian Primary health care approach.

References

Mitton, C., Dionne, F., & Donaldson, C. (2014). Managing Healthcare Budgets in Times of Austerity: The Role of Program Budgeting and Marginal Analysis. Appl Health Econ Health Policy.

West, T., Cronk, M., Goodman, R., & Waymire, T. (2010). Increasing Accountability through Performance-Based Budgeting. JOURNAL OF GOVERNMENT FINANCIAL MANAGEMEN.

King, R. & Walace, S. (2010). Managing Accountability Research through Budgeting Practice and Performance in small Healthcare Business. Elsevier.

.