ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the key financial, operational, and utilization performance indicators that administrators can use to monitor the health of their organization and presents these nonclinical indicators. The healthcare organization's financial profile is reported externally in two documents: the balance sheet and the income statement. Patient days—the number of days of care rendered to adult and pediatric patients during the entire reporting period—adjusted for inpatient revenue, outpatient services, or acuity of illness. Average number of days that patients were inpatients, a productivity measure often trended and compared with benchmarks. Because the majority of hospital expenses are related to inpatient care, the practice is to minimize average length of stay in favor of more lucrative outpatient services. The ratio of full-time equivalents to an approximation of patient days it can be misleading if outsourced labor and contract labor are not considered.
