Customer Reviews

Essentials of Health Care Finance, Fifth Edition

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I have finished about 5 different chapters for a Masters degree course I am taking. This book is not for beginners! I am an RN and have been working in business for 10 years. The author assumes that you have had basic accounting and the terminology is unfamiliar. There are very few examples given so it is hard to take the information and see how it is really used. I have had to buy another book just so that I could understand this book.

This book represents the foundation on which all healthcare organizations should examine their financial strength and management. While not for beginners, it provides a comprehensive overview of reporting and benchmarks that prove invaluable during the budgeting process and for financial control.

I can not give a completer review as I am still reading this book. I will say the majority of my friends reading this book at the same time as I am are having a difficult time following and understanding the principles discussed. I think it is just not as basic as it could have started to give the beginner a better foundation. Also a glossary of terms would have been a tremendous help.

I have been a professional in healthcare finance for nearly 20 years and have recently taught an accounting/finance course for an MHA program using this text. The book was terrible and I am switching to Gapenski's "Healthcare Finance" for next year's class. This text is rife with errors, out of date in terms of terminology and concepts and extremely hard for the students to use. It came with minimal (and poorly conceived) support material for use by the instructor. There were test banks, for example, with questions that queried material not covered in the text (maybe covered in a previous edition, but later excised from the chapter?) and several simple math errors in the examples.

It appears that this is the "standard text" for healthcare finance, but I can't see why. The course material is hard enough without adding a confusing text into the mix. I would (and will) avoid this book.

Text I will use next year:

Healthcare Finance: An Introduction to Accounting and Financial Management

This books offers a broad coverage of health care topics for a non-financial person. It is most deeply flawed for its inability to communicate clearly to a lay person. Essentially it is a vocabulary primer of important financial principles and concepts. It requires abstract thinking and the ability to follow mathematical models.

This reader studied Cleverly's text as a requirement for a healthcare finance class. The text was frustrating as this reader attempted to "know" everything about healthcare finances; however, this is probably not the intent of the book. It does present a road into the foreign land of finances. It demands respect for another set of data and another language for interpreting that data. One does not master this data set at one pass, however.

Nevertheless, this reader did gain some new financial information. At the risk of being simplistic, but communicative; a listing of some of the concepts learned follows:

1. There are many users of financial information.

2. Financial information can guide the formation of programs.

3. Financial management is essential for successful healthcare organizations.

4. Various qualities of health care organization types.

5. How health care organizations make up for discouting and bad debt and capitated payments.

6. General principles of accounting and why they are important. Also that these principles still need to be explained, to be consistent, and to be clarified.

7. Overview of four main types of financial statements with a brief explanation of vaious line items.

8. That financial planning includes considering inflation before it happens, and for equipment etc. to break and wear out before it breaks or wears out.

9. That financial information can be better understood by comparing financial ratios of different line items and trends over time. There are national benchmarking ratios available and Cleverly gives some and tells how to get more.

10. That financial planning should be an orderly process in an organization.

11. There are different types of costs. Some stay the same, some are overhead types. Some are direct, some are hidden. Some can be controlled, some cannot.

12. Figuring out prices is a very complex process in healthcare. It is based on costs and payers. It must also include indirect costs and costs of future problems.

13. There is still stuff to learn . . . And this reader is still no expert.

Finally, after this MSN course and this text, this reader is more conversant with the financial landscape. It holds interest and it is understandable, after all.

I graduated from The Ohio State University and used this book for the multiple finance classes we are required to take in the MHA program. This book is not designed for beginners. It was written for those that have experience in the healthcare field and more specifically the business sector of healthcare. The prerequisite for that program is to already have multiple finance and accounting classes, with the expectation to hit the ground running. It is not an easy read otherwise. Dr. Cleverley is considered the guru of hospital finance and spends a lot of time working with healthcare executives; his goal is to provide you with a level of understanding that allows you to operate at that level. This is an excellent resource for those who will work in any part of healthcare that deals with finances and financial reporting of any sort. I can sympathize with those that are more clinically oriented and required to use this book in their finance class(es). It would be an extremely difficult read.

Although I received an A in the course, I found using this book very tedious. It was not written and organized in a manner that assisted the student in finding information and answers to their questions. I was happy to sell this book back after class was over!

This is a very difficult book to digest if you are not familiar with accounting concepts. This is not a beginner text! The text is written in a very broad context, however, the expectation in my class was to apply the broad concepts to detailed financial problems. This was difficult because Cleverly offerred few examples to help apply the difficult financial concepts. I found the text to be utterly frustrating!

I must say I was quite impressed with the range of topics this book covers. It may not be an entry level finance book, but I highly recommend this book for financial analysts in the health care industry. A lot of the topics in the book are relevant to what I do at work.

The collaborative effort of William O. Cleverley, Paula H. Song, and James O. Cleverley, "Essentials of Health Care Finance" appears in its seventh updated edition to provide health management students and executives with insights on financial decision-making in health care. From theory to its application under a range of conditions, this covers skilled nursing facilities, surgical centers, and private practices alike, with chapters showing how to analyze financial position, develop plans, use variance analysis in budgets, and more.