Unit budgets

Unit budgets quantify the financial resources available to a unit during a specified date range. Unit budgets are used in reporting to determine how patient workload hours or scheduled staffing hours for a unit compare to the budget. For example, the Weekly Utilization Report compares the unit budget with the amount of scheduled staffing hours and workload. This comparison indicates if a unit is performing over or under budget.

Unit budgets are represented in budgeted hours per patient day (Budgeted HPPD). Budgeted HPPD is a ratio of the total hours budgeted for all staff that provide care on a unit divided by the annual patient days. This value represents the average hours of care and staff budgeted per patient for the time period being analyzed.

Unit budgets may be created on a permanent basis. Alternatively, unit budgets can be created on a temporary basis by specifying an effective date range. Budgets for the same unit may not have effective date ranges that overlap.

To create unit budgets, you must specify these values:

Patient days: Patient days are specified per year separately for each patient care type category. A single patient day is counted when a patient accesses the services of a healthcare facility during a 24-hour period. Patient days are still counted as a full patient day even if the patient is admitted for only a part of the 24-hour period. Patient days are the denominator for the Budgeted HPPD calculation.
Annual job hours: Each unit producing job configured for the unit specifies the number of hours that are budgeted for that job during a year. Annual job hours are the numerator for the annual job hours calculation.
Budget job day parts: Budget job day parts break down Budgeted HPPD across individual day parts. Each unit producing job specifies a percentage for each day part. This percentage determines how to divide annual job hours for each day across each individual day part.