Verified Document

Accounting Standards Financial Reporting Practices And Ethical Essay

Accounting Standards Financial reporting practices and ethical standards in health care finance constitute the foundation of every successful organization. Healthcare organizations and other industries in the general market adopt Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). The main objective behind this is to boost the organization's value by maintaining the integrity within and to leverage public trust. This paper summarizes the elements of financial management, GAAP and ethical standards in healthcare finance.

Elements of Financial Management

Financial management as a holistic process constitutes of four recognized elements: controlling, planning, organizing and directing, and decision-making (Baker & Baker, 2011). The formulation of the four elements was mainly through consideration of the purpose behind each task. This paper discusses the four elements in detail.

Planning is a crucial division of financial managements. Every organization sets objectives to guide their performance, meeting such objectives require the company's financial manager to take stepwise procedures. The manager of financial operations within the organization pinpoints the procedures that must be followed in pursuit of achieving such targets. Planning plays, the capital role in identifying the organization's business objectives and the steps needed to accomplish the objectives.

Organizations formulate plans and objectives, which regularly need management. The element of controlling drives the financial manager to ensure that each plan runs as stipulated by the organization, for the organization's operations. An example of control method is the comparison of current and previous reports. This process highlights the areas that the company or organization may need upgrade due to ineffectiveness. The main purpose of controlling is to ensure the implementation of plans to the latter (Baker and Baker 2011).

The division of organizing and directing assists the financial manager in making critical decisions on the utilization of organization's resources to the most...

Directing entails the manager ensuring that the organization's results run efficiently. The purpose of this element of financial management is to ensure regular supervision and controlled utilization of available resources.
The element of decision-making is a daily process in every organization's managerial staff in their practices. Financial managers often make choices from several alternatives given to them. Decision-making binds to the consequent elements of planning, organizing and control. This depends on information with its core tasks constituting analysis and evaluation. The analyzed and evaluated information is mainly of a financial nature. Decision-making holds the purpose of making informed choices.

Generally Accepted Accounting Principles

Health care organizations have over the years adopted the general code of ethics. The organization's management employs these ethic codes in the interpretation of the organization's financial transactions. Such transactions involve the preparation of financial reports and statements. The accepted principles include consistency, relevance, reliability, and comparability. The concept of consistency stipulates that financial information be collected and reported in the same manner recurrently. Conceptual relevance requires that information contains a purpose and should provide credible support to the financial statements and reports. Reliability means that the reported information truly reflects the organization's statement of account. Comparability: the reported information is comparable with those from other organizations within the industry (Bradford, 2007).

Financial Ethical Standards

Confidentiality: accounting professionals are privy to financial information that is sensitive in nature. Such information could be utilized for purposes like financial gain, countering other entities'. The accepted accounting ethical standards restrict such confidential information only to the authorized parties. Certified Public Accountants and other…

Sources used in this document:
References

Barrett, M. (1976). Financial Reporting Practices: Disclosure and Comprehensiveness in an International Setting. Journal of Accounting Research. 14(1), 10-26.

Camiciottoli, C and Belinda (2011). Business Ethics: Professional Ethics. Business Communication Quarter l. Vol. 74 Issue 3, p 298-312, 15 p, 3.

Baker, J.J., & Baker, R.W. (2011). Health care finance: Basic tools for non-financial managers (3rd Ed.). New York: Jones & Bartlett.
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Ethical and Legal Obligations in Financial Reporting
Words: 1865 Length: 4 Document Type: Term Paper

Ethical and Legal obligations in financial reporting is extremely important in today's world, fraught as it is with corporate frauds and accounting scams and scandals of every other sort. One Company, the Thornburg Investment Company, has taken a firm stand on financial reporting within its company, wherein all concerned officials are expected to report accurately, any actual, as well as suspected violations and breaches in the laws and rules and

International Regulation, Accounting Standards and Australia Background...
Words: 2902 Length: 10 Document Type: Essay

International Regulation, Accounting Standards and Australia Background and Need for Regulation International regulation is a necessity in the finance arena as the world bears a high rate of interconnection, particularly via banking and accounting. In 2008, Europe was given international accolades for its attempts to strengthen the world financial system and protect nations all over the world from a serious crisis. "Europe led the way last year in facing down the

Financial Management Content Find Articles Address Financial
Words: 1275 Length: 4 Document Type: Essay

Financial Management Content Find articles address financial reporting practices ethics standards health care finance, including * generally accepted accounting principles * corporate compliance, ethics, and fraud abuse Financial management: Literature review Healthcare institutions, like all organizations, are continually confronted with the four basic elements of financial management: deciding what to invest in or produce; how to finance those investments or products; how to manage assets, and how to report those assets in a

Ethics in Business: Accounting Standards Accounting Standards
Words: 786 Length: 3 Document Type: Term Paper

Ethics in Business: Accounting Standards Accounting Standards Ethics in Business Accounting Standards The objective of this work is to address the relationship among the FASB, SEC, and PCAOB and to provide explanations of basic accounting theories, assumptions and principles; and finally to evaluate the role of ethics in accounting. Victor, G. & Levitin, M. (2004) Current SEC and PCAOB Developments -- September 2004. The national conference of the AICPA in relation to recent SEC developments

Disclosure and Financial Reporting
Words: 2209 Length: 8 Document Type: Term Paper

Failure-to-Disclose Disclosure & Financial Accounting Environmental and Financial Factors in the Petroleum Industry The petroleum industry has a unique responsibility in the initiative to practice environmental safeguarding while producing the petroleum products in such great demand. The financial manager must be decide what weight to apply to costs in terms of new processes and methods that are efficient as well as environmentally friendly and complaint. Weighing Costs in Failure-to-Disclose Environmental and Financial Factors in

Accounting for Income Taxes the
Words: 2863 Length: 10 Document Type: Term Paper

This process has been ongoing since then. One of the major differences between the two standards is going to be that whereas GAAP emphasizes rules, the IFRS is a principle-based approach. Implementing a principles-based approach has significant implications for American tax practice. Many of the specific differences between the two systems will have a direct impact on tax practice. In IFRS, LIFO is prohibited and inventory write-downs may be reversed

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now