Section One—Staffing Budget and FTEs Personnel Budget Case Study

Sandra Chambers has recently accepted the position of assistant administrator for the department of nursing at Potter Regional Medical Center where she will oversee the operations of five medical units. As she evaluates the budgets for the different cost centers, she finds that all are being used at near or full capacity. The activity in four of the five has remained steady over the past 2 years. A fifth unit has realized a steady increase in patient volume during that time and is currently at 88% capacity. It has been projected that within the next 12 months the volume of patients moving through that unit will increase by 20%. Sandra needs to determine if the current FTEs for the unit will be sufficient to ensure quality and safe care continues to be provided, and if not, what is the number of FTEs that will be needed to cover a 20% increase in volume.

Section Two—Variance Analysis Variance Analysis Case Study

During the month of February, an outpatient surgery clinic has incurred a significant unfavorable variance. The director of the clinic is quite concerned, as this has never occurred before. The director gathers information on total nursing care hours, average hourly rate of the employees, and total patient visits to determine what caused the variance. In addition, the director receives the patient acuity levels for the month of February.