Management of Health and Social Care Financial Issues

1. Explain how financial shortfalls can be managed.

If a health and social care organisation faces financial shortfalls I could handle the situation by;

Cash flow: In the effectiveness management of the cash flow process we can sell some assets that are not in use so that the organisation can get some cash in order to run the business. The organisation could also take out a loan to cover the financial shortfall but this will need to be paid back with some percentage of interest which will put the organisation or care home in more debt so the organisation should be working effectively on the Controlling cost,Spreadsheet, Training, Alternative funding, Reserve fund and Prioritising expenses, etc

Ladybird care home can also rise the cost of the services offered to service users and use the profit against the financial shortfall but in this case the company may lose the number of service users taking the services as they can get a lower cost service elsewhere. The organisation can also put any projects on hold for time being and use that money in the financial shortfall to cover some amount of debt, once the financial problems have been sorted then they can run the project again. Ladybird care home can cover some part of the shortfalls in alternative ways other than taking out a loan and falling into more financial shortfall in future by holding a (charity fundraising events, donation, grants from government or other companies working in partnership) with Ladybird care home. As a health and social care professional and having knowledge on financial management department I can look into the system and see where the money has gone into and analyse the shortfall and accordingly fixing the various target areas of expenditures. We can also keep a track of the system and prevent any future financial shortfalls.

3.2Explain the actions to be taken in the event of suspected fraud.

All allegations of fraud must be investigated. Where appropriate the police must be informed. Actions must be taken where fraud is proved. The risk of fraud must be regularly reviewed as part of managers’ overall assessment of business risk. Steps that managers must take are; the managers role is to Identify the risk areas in the healthcare organisation and allocate responsibility for the risk. The manager has to deal with any risk that may rise and identify controls that would improve the way in which the risk is being managed, because the manager has to make sure the employees are not at any risk during working hours. The manager at the health care organisation has a duty to implement the revised controls and evaluate the effectiveness of the controls to prevent from future risk of fraud taking in place.

All the staff members at workplace must report any suspect of fraud to their line manager but they must not take any actions as they may put themselves at risk. Staffs have also a role to be taking in place when a risk of fraud rises, they need to report it immediately but also should avoid putting themselves in danger.

Staffs must

Staff should make an immediate note of their concerns and let some know their suspicions. This person must be with the appropriate authority and should have the experience to deal with the situation.

Staff must also take anonymous letters seriously. This is because a whistleblower may not want their identify to be disclosed.

Staff must not

• Do nothing.
• Be afraid of raising any concerns.
• Approach or accuse any individuals directly.
• Try to investigate the matter themselves.
• Convey suspicions to anyone other than those with the proper authority.
• Handle documentary evidence more than necessary.

The next stage is audit and corporate assurance fraud team; they will carry out investigations into allegations of fraud and will provide advice and guidance to line manager on how to deal with this type of situation when raised. The audit team will make announced visits to check on the areas where there is a high risk of frau; by raising fraud awareness at team meeting, conferences and presentations. The investigation will be carried out using analysis tools to interrogate corporate data to identify indicators of possible fraud.

3.3 Evaluate budget monitoring arrangements in a health and social care organisation.

In every organisations there is a way of monitoring budgets but have their own systems of arranging information to process it.

In Health Care Tech PLC, the financial manager doesn’t have any formal qualification in the finance sector but he has years of experience in managing care home budgets and his also good with keeping cashflow statement on a spreadsheet.

NMS is a network management system, it is a set of hardware and software tool that allows IT professionals to supervise the individual components of a network within a larger network management framework.

Reference

 

The role of budgets in organisations facing strategic change: an exploratory study.

(Margaret A. Abernethy, Peter Brownell)