HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE

Managing Financial Resources in Health and Social Care

Managing Financial Resources in Health and Social Care

Introduction

British United Provided Association (BUPA) is a leader in the global healthcare group as it serves in more than 140 countries and has over 14 million customers. Bupa offers company financed health insurance and also personal insurance. It also offers medical subscription products, health services, home healthcare and health assessment and chronic disease management services. It is a private limited company with no shareholders. They invest their profits in the betterment of people and healthcare. Bupa is one of the largest medical insurer in the United kingdom. Bupa has a market share of around 40 % that provides coverage for approximately 2.5 million people.A detailed range of medical facilities and schemes exists for both the indivuals and businesses in Bupa. (Bupa,2012)

Bupa employs more than 62,000 people in the Australia, UK, Poland, New Zealand, USA, Saudi Arabia, India, Thailand, China etc. Its purpose is healthier, happier and longer lives for people. It began in 1947 in the UK with the purpose of relieving and curing sickness of every kind.(Bupa,2012)1.1 Costing and Business Control Systems in BUPA

Different department has various expectations and needs in Bupa. The departments rely heavily on the implementation of this system in Bupa. The core business processes of Bupa include high profile and deliberate activities that help the organization to steer the direction of cultural change(Bupa,2012). The management structure in Bupa is fairly a flat management structure with few top managers but has many second level managers. They carry out all the management problems in behalf of Bupa in their countries of jurisdiction. There is a top down management framework in Bupa that aligns its various strategies and plans used at the hospitals. This helps the management of Bupa to align its planning strategies to achieve the goals. With a diverse set of speciality and employees in BUPA and advancement in IT technology, the key business processes taken from Bupa Director's report 2012 that may be adopted in BUPA are:

1) Life cycle System development for new projects 2) Guidelines and rules for architecture and strategy 3) Total quality management 4) Six sigma strategies 5) Balanced scorecard 6) Value addition and activity based costing 7) BUPA has intensely implemented the balance scorecard 1.2 Main Income Heads for BUPA

The main heads of income in the last financial year taken from Bupa Director's Report 2012 are; 1) The revenue increased due to the increase in the fee annually of each resident 2) Decline in the operating surplus because of the increase in the utility costs and payroll 3) Occupancy percentage is stable despite the public authority funding restrictions and a slow down in self funded admissions 4) Available beds continuing: The reduction in beds and the temporary closure of large homes whose capacity is underutilized at the publicly funded market. This resulted in both increased operational efficiencies and improved resident experience.

1.3 Financial Regulatory Requirements in BUPA

In order to ...