Test 1 Flashcards
Chapters: 1-4
Uses and Users of Financial Information:
Evaluating the FINANCIAL CONDITION of an entity
Status of a firm’s assets, liabilities, and equity positions, described in financial statements.
- Equated with an organization’s viability
- Most common use of financial info.
- Underlies most business decisions
- Includes short-term v. long-term conditions
Uses and Users of Financial Information:
Evaluating STEWARDSHIP within an entity
Management’s responsibility to properly utilize organization’s resources (including people) and financial assets.
- Historically: most important aspect
- Designed to prevent loss of assets through employees’ malfeasance.
Uses and Users of Financial Information: Assessing the EFFICIENCY of operations
The ratio of outputs to inputs; the lowest possible cost of production.
- Rising in importance due to increasing healthcare costs and lower reimbursement.
- Implies availability of standards or benchmarks for comparison.
Uses and Users of Financial Information: Assessing the EFFECTIVENESS of operations
Attainment of objectives through production of outputs
- Difficult to measure as organizations do not always states their objectives quantitatively.
- Less emphasis than efficiency; unnecessary services at efficient prices.
Uses and Users of Financial Information: Determining the COMPLIANCE of operation with directives
Whether or not the directives are followed
- Financial reporting is required to ensure compliance.
- Internally (Budgets)
- Externally (Lenders, Credit rating agencies)
Financial Management Functions: Controllers
Responsible for internal finances:
- Direct preparation of financial statements and reports.
- Direct preparation of budgets.
- Analyze future earnings and expenses.
- Develop internal control procedures.
- Prepare reports for regulatory agencies.
Financial Management Functions: Treasurers
Responsible for external finances:
- Establish billing, credit, and collection policies
- Manage investments
- Secure financing
- Short-term: Line of credit, transfer of funds
- Long-term: Bond issuance
- Maintain investor and credit rating relations.
- Analyze mergers and acquisition opportunities.
Forms of Business Organizations: Not-For-Profit
- Objective function: maximize shareholders’ value instead of profit maximization.
- Shareholders: Communities, not individuals.
- Exempt from federal income tax and most state/local property taxes
- Required to provide “community benefit”
- Lower cost of equity capital than IO but more limited access to capital.
- Currently comprise 80% of hospitals
Forms of Business Organizations: Investor-Owned Health Care Entities
- Objective function: Maximize shareholders’ profits
- Shareholders: risk-based equity investor
- Able to access capital through debt and equity.
- Subject to “double taxation” (corporate and shareholder level)
Types of Investor-Owned Entities: Publicly-Traded
Buy and sell shares of the firm on the open market.
- Subject to reporting requirements and regulation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
- Advantage: Able to raise equity capital through sales of stocks.
Types of Investor-Owned Entities: Privately-Held
Shares are held by a few investors and not available to the general public.
- Advantage: Far fewer reporting requirements from SEC
- Until recently, Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) was the largest.
Types of Investor-Owned Entities: Professional Corporations
Professional corporation/association (PC/PA): formed by professionals with the advantage of corporation.
- Shareholders are free from personal liability; professionals are liable.
- Widely used by physicians.
Types of Investor-Owned Entities: Sole Proprietorships
Unincorporated businesses owned by a single individual.
- Advantages:
- Easy and inexpensive to set up
- No profit sharing
- No government regulation
- No special income taxes
- Disadvantages:
- Unlimited liability
- Limited access to capital
Types of Investor-Owned Entities: Partnerships
Unincorporated businesses with two or more owners
- Advantages:
- Easy to form
- Subject to few government regulations
- Not subject to double-taxation
- Disadvantages:
- Unlimited liability
- Difficult to dissolve
- Potential for conflict among partners
Types of Investor-Owned Entities: Limited Liability Companies/Partnerships (LLC/LLP)
Combine characteristics of partnership and liability protection of corporation.
- Liability of the general partner is limited.
- Flexible to structure allocations of income and losses as owners choose
- Required to follow tax allocation rules
Government-Owned Health Care Organizations
Public organization, owned by state or local government.
- Sometimes able to access additional revenue through taxes.
- Not able to raise funds through equity investments.
- Like NFPs, exempt from property and income taxes.
- May face political pressure to return some earning to the community or reduce prices.
NFP Non-Business-Oriented Organization
Perform voluntary services in communities
- Tax-emept
- Rely primarily on public donations
- Different financial statements and management than business-oriented firms.
i.e. Red Cross, American Cancer Society