Review the following case study and respond to the questions outlines below.
Dr. Thomas Powers operates a single-provider family medical practice. One medical assistant handles appointments, basic bookkeeping functions, and assists with medical records. Two additional medical assistants assist in patient care. Mrs. Powers, the physician's wife, comes into the office on an irregular basis to prepare the bank deposit. The accountant for the practice has been able to convince Dr. Powers that he needs to hire a practice manager, rather than another medical assistant, to manage the increasing workload of the practice.
Teresa Ruiz has been hired into the position of practice manager and has arrived for her first day of work. The medical assistant responsible for opening the mail and posting patient payments tells Ms. Ruiz that patient records are up to date on payments received and charges for services, but she has been instructed to only place the cash and checks received into the cash drawer and that Mrs. Powers would handle the cash from that point. In the cash drawer, Ms. Ruiz finds checks dated over the past 2 weeks, cash far in excess of that needed for daily operations, and dozens of IOUs where Dr. Powers has taken cash from the cash drawer for lunches.
Harrison, C., & Harrison, W. (2013). The Rising Costs of Medical Services and Health Care Reform. In Introduction to Health Care Finance and Accounting (1st ed., p. 155). Clifton Park: Cengage Learning.
In a one page response, define and describe the appropriate steps for Ms. Ruiz to take to establish reasonable financial controls over the cash handling process.
Moral decision-making provides tools that may be used to determine and justify terms in which scarce resource allocation decisions are made. As a future health care leader, your ethical obligations are to the organization, population, or entire health system.
Reflect on what you know about budgeting, as it relates to finance and accounting, and identify which resource(s) you would reallocate to prevent your grant funded health facility from shutting its doors. Explain the criterion used to determine or balance your decision.