LI Course
CE Hours: 3 contact hours

Partnership: Health Administration

Statement of Purpose and Institute Overview: This course will teach practitioners and leaders in local public health agencies (LPHAs) how to measure, monitor and improve their financial performance. Currently, public health lacks an operational framework for basic levels of financial analysis and research. While instruments to measure performance of the public health system have emerged, methods to measure finance as a vital component of the system have not been developed. The result is a gap of not being able to fully understand the interrelated dynamics of the system. Understanding the interrelationship of essential components in a system is critical to quality improvement and to achieving outcomes. To assure that the financial resources of a LPHA are aligned with the mission and vision, methods are needed that monitor financial operations to detect problems, sustain existing funding streams, drive improvements in the type and amount of resources available, and to transparently account for expenditures. Sound financial management concepts that will be taught include: 1) the ability to apply financial management quantitative analysis techniques found in related fields, 2) utilize financial analysis for organizational sustainability and risk mitigation, and 3) incorporate values for sharing and benchmarking financial information between agencies and within the profession. This course will teach participants about 1) the best practices available in financial management, analysis, and transparency as found in other industries that help to form the local public health system; 2) the definition of the components that form the model financial performance practices; 3) introduce a set of financial indicators applicable to local public health financial management, and 4)define a method to quantitatively analyze financial data. The lead faculty, Peggy A. Honoré, has published widely on this topic. She is currently the Principal Investigator for a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded project to advance public health finance and has practiced finance in government, private industry and academia where she also teaches on the subject. The assistant faculty member, Cheryll D. Lesneski, is a clinical assistant faculty member in the School of Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill and works with local public health systems in FL, NC, and WV on improving performance using continuous quality improvement methods. She is currently consulting with 11 local public health systems in NE North Carolina on the development and use of financial performance measures. Lesneski has also spent 10 years as director of a successful public health agency in the FL Department of Health.

Session Objectives: Upon completion of this course the participants will be able to: 1. Relate the concept of financial ratio analysis to the practice of public health 2. Apply a standard set of financial performance indicators to their organizations 3. List best practices of financial management, analysis, and accountability found in the financial management of system partners (eg, hospitals, schools, universities) 4. Interpret financial results 4. Describe the key components of financial accountability systems 5. Compare and benchmark financial performance between organizations

CE Credits: CME, Health Education (CHES), Nursing