1
Doing More With Less
Michelle Bryan
Walden University
PUBH 6031: Public Health Administration & Leadership
Dr. Cappello
07/03/2022
Doing More With Less
Diabetes and the Healthy People 2020 Public Health Strategies
Recently, the subject specialists at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources have selected the acknowledged evidence-based resources for Healthy People 2020. The problem of healthy people 2020 links to access to quality services that aim to prolong United States’ people and against preventable diseases. In Minnesota, about 10% of the adult population lives with diabetes, and the plan focuses on the national guidelines on managing the ailment. Diabetes management, powered by systems thinking, is anticipated to match the healthy people’s goal of 2020 of the developed health quality, accessibility, and longer life span for the inhabitants (National Center for Health Statistics, 2020). Public health services are always provided in a financially constrained environment with limited funds. However, federal, state, and local governments fund various public health initiatives. Since the capability of public health funding is critical, the leadership of the Lake Trouble Shadows department of Minnesota must familiarize themselves with budgeting to assess financial variations. Therefore, budget and resource management principles will assist public health in monitoring the economic capacity of diabetes patients within local economic zones in Minnesota.
Budget and Resource Management
Budget and resource management are essential to public health management in implementing goals and services to the respective departments. They work together to plan all resource processes, budget estimation, and investment organization. In public health, effective financial management is critical and requires a financial expert to provide appropriate services within the community (“Health Budget,” n.d.). The diabetes department of Minnesota ensures the communities are living healthy and is determined to promote and protect health within local zones of Minnesota. Since ineffective budgeting can negatively influence the overall productivity and goals of the public health department, principles and tools can improve the overall budget and resource management.
Principles and Tools of Budgeting and Resource Management
Teamwork and empowerment define the culture of the Lake Trouble Shallows Department of Minnesota. The former encourages active collaboration and communication with community members and stakeholders. Through cooperation, the department can achieve its goals by solving the patients’ problems and making decisions that enhance management. Empowerment creates a culture that encourages people to make healthy choices and exercise judgment and initiatives about the people living with diabetes within local zones of Minnesota (Gapenski, n.d.-b). These principles guide public health leadership in practicing economic strategies that improve budgeting. Such strategies are programs that perform cost analysis, expenditures, incurred costs, and services, and economic evaluations that compare programs and services. These policies will help the stakeholders in Minnesota to determine the benefits of the policies and their related costs to implement and maintain them. A budget analysis predicts the prices of new programs. Thus, through financial experts, the Minnesota management can practice classifying cost inflow, expenditures, and financial reporting. Tools of budgeting are also essential in resource management.
Budgeting tools help the management allocate capital to various departments and understand how to utilize funds in several projects. The first tool is the conventional approach. This tool is based on the assumption that the previous budget of the Lake Troubled Shallows Health Center accurately reflects to promote and prevent the disease in the local community of Minnesota. Similarly, it addresses the related revenues like grants and costs, such as salaries and professional fees. The accounting expert will adjust minor changes to the new budget to reflect changes such as training/education. Medical staff in the department will receive training to help them deliver diabetes awareness to the citizens of Minnesota and the ailing patients. Another tool is zero-based budgeting (CFI Team, 2022). This tool requires a fresh start on the budget, with all costs and revenues being justified. It is costly to perform compared with conventional budgeting. Zero-based budgeting produces practical and realistic results, despite being time-consuming. The leadership of Minnesota is facing financial constraints, and this tool is the most preferable because it demands cost-control measures. However, both tools can use conventional for 80% of activities and 20% for the rest annually to reduce budgeting costs.
Funding Issues Affecting the Public Health Initiative about Diabetes Program
A functional diabetes department is vital to building a healthy population within the local areas of Minnesota. However, accurate prediction of the funding level required to support diabetes screening adequately is challenging for various reasons. One is a lack of structure and practical tools for tracking expenditures and revenues (Committee on Public Health Strategies to Improve Health et al., 2012). For instance, the conventional is not costly for the Lake department. However, the errors for the previous budget keep occurring every year. Zero-based is also effective for productive results but expensive for the Minnesota leadership and affects the stakeholders in raising revenues to fund the project. This problem is short-term because a zero-based budgeting tool can amend the error and inefficiencies. Another issue is variations in defining public health.
Lake Troubled Shallows lack a standard definition of public health needs. The leadership has trouble determining the funds spent in entire activities and the money required to address diabetes ailment successfully. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other health entities define public health differently. The inconsistency in the scope and role of public health and variations of agencies included within its boundaries challenge the ability to provide reliable budget estimates (Committee on Public Health Strategies to Improve Health et al., 2012). For instance, this problem affects the management of Minnesota in the long term. Lake Public Health prevents diseases within the local community of Minnesota, and the project will vary with the present condition affecting the community. Recently, the Missouri Diabetes Prevention and Control expected the management to bill ailing patients if not insured for private pay. Such circumstances make the diabetes programs go long-term since they lead to budget cuts. Some of these issues that affect health are urgent, and the management must address them as per life preservation. Vulnerable stakeholders in local zones of Minnesota would be negatively affected by reduced diabetes screening, which can result in escalated ailment and other chronic conditions. Public health cannot measure spending due to uncommon definitions, such as chronic diseases, resulting in inadequate funding and budget variations.
Proposed Recommendation of Funding Sources, Reasons to Recommend Them Based on Budget Worksheet, Including how Variables in Financing Informed Decision-Making
The most recommendable agencies to fund the diabetes program of the Lake Troubled Shallows are operating divisions such as Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the CDC. The HRSA offers grants to fund health professions training programs, and the CDC provides grants that support services and programs for local community public health (Gapenski, n.d.-a). They work to oversee diabetes disease prevalence and make public education and awareness accessible at the local and state level. The two funding agencies provide grants to most public and state public health services. Minnesota’s goal is to prevent diseases and manage diabetes patients. However, The CDC does not prioritize the initiative of Healthy People 2020 and the program outlined by Minnesota. The federal agencies only cover about 30% of the public health costs, while the rest is provided by local or state spending (Novick & Morrow, 2014). Therefore, public health leaders should appropriately allocate the expenditures at this level. In the current project of diabetes screening, the budgeting priorities are to raise revenues, educate the community about diabetes awareness, and invite interest groups to support public health education and fundraising operation.
However, the finance would vary on demographics and public health funding because Minnesota experiences diverse community variations. Likewise, health inequalities in accessing available services will affect the project due to geographical variations. Mostly, federal funding lacks proper coordination, resulting in variation in accessing services. With the variance analysis, the administration can unravel the source of operational problems and identify the ones to avoid or minimize in the future (Gapenski, n.d.-b). Therefore, managers must understand variances in budgeting, whether beyond or within their control, because they can influence spending. Finally, we recommend adequate budgeting to expedite revenue allocation for effective community health care.
Lake Trouble Shallows Project Budget
FISCAL YEAR
2022
FY 2022
FY 2022
FY 2022
FY 2022
REVENUE
PROPOSED
ACTUAL
VARIANCE
+/- PRIOR YEAR
Fundraisers and events
100000.00
80000.00
Foundation
130000.00
130000.00
Donations
40000.00
80000.00
Grants
250000.00
250000.00
Miscellaneous
30000.00
40000.00
TOTALS
$550,000.00
$580,000.00
$0.00
$0.00
FY 2022
FY 2022
FY 2022
FY 2022
EXPENSES
PROPOSED
ACTUAL
VARIANCE
+/- PRIOR YEAR
Salaries
100,000.00
Benefits
25,000.00
Contract Labor
15,000.00
Rent
20,000.00
Utilities
15,000.00
Travel and meetings
15,000.00
Professional fees
40,000.00
Training/Education
70,000.00
Marketing/advertising
10,000.00
Insurance
10,000.00
Telephone
15,000.00
Web fees (website, meeting space, etc.)
30,000.00
Equipment
80,000.00
Supplies
15,000.00
Postage
5,000.00
Miscellanous
80,000.00
TOTALS
$545,000.00
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
References
CFI Team. (2022). Types of budgets- The four most common budgeting methods. CFI. https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/accounting/types-of-budgets-budgeting-methods/
Committee on Public Health Strategies to Improve Health, Board on Population Health and Public Health Practices, & Institute of Medicine. (2012). Funding sources and structures to build public health. For the public’s health: Investing in a healthier future (pp. 101-126). National Academies Press.
Gapenski, L. C. (n.d.-a). Public health finance tutorial series: Module I. Public Health Finance. http://www.publichealthfinance.org/media/file/PHFM_Finance_Tutorial_I.pdf
Gapenski, L. C. (n.d.-b). Public health finance tutorial series: Module III. Public Health Finance. http://www.publichealthfinance.org/media/file/PHFM_Finance_Tutorial_III.pdf
Health budget. (n.d.). World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/health-topics/health-budget#tab=tab_1
National Center for Health Statistics. (2020). Health people 2020. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/healthy_people/hp2020.htm
Novick, L. F., & Morrow, C. B. (2014). Public health administration: Principles for population-based management. Jones and Bartlett Publishers.