No business wishes to go under, due to cash flow or any other reason. Owners and management teams of business entities explore all the possible avenues to help their business stay afloat in times of financial turbulence. However, cutting underhanded deals and skirting the law to keep a business running is both ill-informed and short-sighted. Criminal activity always finds a way of catching up with the perpetrators; and once this happens, the damages are almost always irreparable and deemed to obliterate the business entity from existence. The healthcare industry in which our long-term care facility operates is run on the fundamental principles of medical ethics (American Psychiatric Association, 2001). These principles include; autonomy, justice, beneficence, and non-maleficence.
Exaggerating the severity of the therapeutic needs of the patients we have and receive in our facility to increase Medicaid and Medicare payments is a federal crime. Over the years, healthcare facilities have been caught engaging in this malpractices, and for them, they have paid hefty fines. For instance, in 2013, the Ensign group of post-acute care and therapy facilities paid US$48Million in federal fines for this exact crime (Thomas, 2015). Apart from its illegal nature, this malpractice is in direct contravention with every principle of medical ethics mentioned in earlier sections of this write-up. Allowing the facility to be coerced or coaxed into committing this felony by the consultant, just because of his close friendship with the facility’s administrator compromises our autonomy. A decision to overstate the therapeutic needs of patients creates an imbalance in the distribution of limited Medicare resources and infringes the rights of all the patients across the country who depend on this government initiative. It is unjust, and it creates a conflict with the existing laws and policies that govern the healthcare industry. The move would be Maleficent as it negatively impacts on the patients, the taxpayers and the society as a whole.
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Options to Help the Facility Remain Solvent
There are several viable and legal options that the facility can explore to help our survival efforts. Some of these options are a bitter pill to swallow, will bring radical changes to our management and operability structures, but extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. The first option involves taking measures to reduce operational expenses (Eastaugh, 2004). This would involve the laying off of some of our staff members and identifying and scrapping operations whose expenses overrun the outcomes. We would also seek to reduce the scope in the number and type of healthcare services we offer. The second option would be to look for a financially able partner in the industry, to merge with or negotiate for an acquisition. The third option would be to raise capital by looking for investors such as private equity firms, hedge funds and much more.
The first option does not appear appropriate from my perspective; it looks more like running away from a problem rather than facing it. The steps involved in the first choice, if not implemented correctly, can significantly compromise the quality of our services the morale of our staff. They might provide short-term solutions but have fatal implications in the long run. In my capacity as the financial manager, I choose advice the management of our facility to pursue a merger with a viable partner or negotiate for an acquisition that will be beneficial to both the facility and the staff, and to the acquirer. This calls for me to work with all other departmental heads within the facility to prepare articulate, factually correct and credible accounts of our financial and other positions, to present to the prospective merger partners or acquirers.
The American healthcare system is in a crisis, which makes it very hard to convince investors to put their money herein (Thomas, 2015). We stand a better chance at convincing players who are already in the industry to partner with us or acquire us. Our current situation does not give us much leverage, but we would negotiate to be allowed to maintain most of our staff and continue to operate semi-autonomously. All these terms might not be met, but we would get the opportunity to keep the healthcare facility alive and running.
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2001). The principles of medical ethics: With annotations especially applicable to psychiatry . Amer Psychiatric Pub Incorporated.
Eastaugh, S. R. (2004). Health care finance and economics . Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Thomas, K. (2015, April 14). In Race for Medicare Dollars, Nursing Home Care May Lag. Retrieved June 13, 2017, from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/15/business/as-nursing-homes-chase-lucrative-patients-quality-of-care-is-said-to-lag.html?_r=0
