Finance department regard nursing units as not being revenue generator. Why would you believe they’re inaccurate in their assessment?

The finance department’s notion that nursing does not generate revenue but is an expense is inaccurate. Health plans compensate healthcare providers for physician-based care, but they do not receive direct compensation because they provide nursing care. In this case, therefore, the department views nursing as an expense.

This is inaccurate because nursing work complements the services that physicians provide because they implement physicians’ instructions, and are directly involved in the delivery of care. Recently, the scope of nursing practice has improved, with nurses playing an important role in addressing patients’ health concerns (Lasater et al., 2021).

Due to the evolving role of the nurse, nurses in states such as Colorado are legally allowed to prescribe medications. Failing to recognize how nurses are bridging the gap in health care access by not recognizing the role nursing units play amounts to the wrong assessment of these units. Thus, there is a need to include these units in the pool of sectors that generate revenue.

Conclusion

In conclusion, variance reporting is important to a nurse because they can use the information on units with limited resources, and make apt decisions that can help improve the subsequent budgeting activities. When a nurse leader wants to identify the sum of the expenses on staffing, they would explore the individual reports including the report that shows the travel expenses.

Using these reports, the nurse leader can be able to tell whether their organization is spending more on staffing. Despite the view that managing nursing units require money, these units support service delivery, enhancing the physicians’ work. It is therefore wrong to consider them as expenses, as opposed to viewing them as revenue generators.

References

Anderson, D. M., Cronk, R., Best, L., Radin, M., Schram, H., Tracy, J. W., & Bartram, J. (2020). Budgeting for Environmental Health Services in Healthcare Facilities: A Ten-Step Model for Planning and Costing. International journal of environmental research and public health, 17(6), 2075. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17062075.