Development of a Hospital Finance Management Model in Yasothon Province

Abstract

The objective of this study was to develop a fanancial management model for hospitals. It was conducted in 9 public hospitals in Yasothon province. The proposed model covered 4 activity areas which included (1) establishment of a responsible organization, (2) setting-up of operational indicators, (3) development of financial management activities, and (4) monitoring and evaluation. All participating hospitals were requested to implement the model for the financial management in the fiscal year 2016, under the responsibility of the provincial chief financial officer and the chief financial officers of the hospitals. The effectiveness of the model was assessed by (1) evaluating the performance with regard to the achievement against the pre-set indicators, and (2) assessing awareness and opinions of the members of financial management committee of each hospital regarding the financial management activities, as well as the achievement of financial management administration. Data were collected from the Health Insurance Group in Office of the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Public Health as well as the provincial assessment and records; and the data were analized by using frequency, percentage, and Pearson product-moment correlation. It was found that the proposed model had contributed to the following achievement: (1) the operating income and the actual expenditure passed the evaluation criteria of not having income below 5% and expenditure not exceeding 5% of the planned indicators in 7 of the 9 participating hospitals; (2) good quality of accounting in 8 hospitals; (3) financial management quality exceeded the 80% target-level in 8 hospitals; (4) absence of financial crisis in 8 hospitals; and (5) the cost of services did not exceed the average of the hospital group in 7 hospitals. Overall, there were 4 hospitals (44.44%) that passed all 5 indicators, namely, Yasothon, Kham Khuean Kaeo, Kudchum and Thaicharoen. As for the hospital finan-cial management committees, 107 of the 120 members responded to the inquiry. High level of attentive-ness was observed among them, 36.45% for overall activities and 51.40% for most of the activities. As well, high level of endorsement on finance activities was observed (65.42% overall and 19.63% for most activities). Best and good financial management administration were observed in 10.13% and 38.10% of the respondents, respectively. There was a significant association between the attentiveness and the en-dorsement of the financial management committee members with the operational quality of financial man-agement in the hospitals. It could be concluded that the proposed model had improved the quality of financial management in hospitals; and the implementation should be continued in order for the hospital financial management committee to gain additional knowledge and understanding for the operation of quality financial management.