Cost Control Strategies for Nursing Institutions

In the case of the basic determination of the source of income, how to control the cost becomes the key to the profitability of the nursing institutions. Below I share with you the cost control strategies for senior living organizations.

Cost control strategies for nursing institutions Part 1

First, the six major cost components of the nursing home

There are many factors affecting the cost of the nursing home, where the region, the size, the standard of service, etc. will affect the cost. Based on the need for decision-making, according to the theory of cost state analysis, the general cost of nursing home costs for cost state analysis, the costs incurred by the relationship with the number of residents is divided into fixed costs and variable costs, the main costs mainly include:

1. Costs incurred due to the use of buildings such as housing: such as the nursing home used for the house is owned, then the cost of depreciation of the house each year, such as the cost of the house, such as the house used for the house is rented, then the cost of the house is the cost of depreciation. Nursing home housing is rented, the cost of annual rent, whether owned or rented, are fixed costs. The depreciation of the home's ancillary senior living equipment is also included in this item.

2. Maintenance costs: maintenance of housing, equipment expenses incurred, fixed costs.

3. Heating costs, fixed costs.

4. Water, electricity and gas costs, semi-variable costs, because of the small proportion of the total cost, can all be regarded as fixed costs.

5. The cost of food and drink for the residents, including only the cost of purchases other than the labor cost of water, electricity and gas, such as the cost of purchasing rice, flour, grain, oil, vegetables and other costs incurred from the cost of the state, belonging to the variable cost of the nursing home is generally based on a certain standard control of this expenditure, such as the nursing home is set at 15 yuan / person / day.

6. Staff wages. Nursing home staff can be divided into three categories: managers, cooks and sanitation staff, caregivers. Among them, the managerial staff wages and cooks and sanitation and cleaning staff wages for fixed costs, caregiver wages for variable costs.

Second, the four major loopholes in the cost management of nursing homes

Next, this paper focuses on the procurement, food and beverage, room service and inventory and other four costs and expenses incurred, the problem of cost management of the nursing home system to analyze and summarize the organization.

Vulnerability 1: Procurement cost control system is not sound

Purchasing work in nursing institutions involves a wide range of items, especially food ingredients need to be purchased every day, which all increase the procurement workload and cost. If the cost control management system in the procurement process is not sound, the following problems are likely to occur:

1. Procurement arbitrariness is large. Due to the special nature of food raw materials, many raw materials need to be purchased in the farmers' market or the morning market and other places, these places need to take the cash purchase, and it is difficult to ask for invoices and receipts, etc., which can easily lead to the purchase price and quality of the purchase does not meet the cost control requirements, at the same time, there is also the possibility of embezzlement.

2. Lack of quantitative methods for purchasing lots. The demand for disposable supplies in nursing homes is high, and the demand is predictable and phased. However, in the actual management, due to the lack of scientific and reasonable ordering analysis, in order to covet the simplicity and time-saving, purchasing staff once the procurement of too many, which not only caused the liquidity squeeze, but also easy to due to the expiration of the product and lead to the occurrence of unnecessary costs. There are also ordering and inventory articulation is not close, resulting in insufficient inventory quantities, in order to ensure the normal operation of the elderly institutions, to take emergency procurement, resulting in higher costs.

3. The internal and external supervision system of the procurement department is not sound. Many of the purchasing departments of the elderly institutions hold the purchasing power of the whole institution, and at the same time, there is no corresponding purchasing supervision body to restrain, the cost accountant is only to verify the quality and quantity of the purchased materials, the constraints of the role is not very big, which makes it easy for the purchasing staff to form a fraudulent partnership with the suppliers and so on, so as to produce a grey space for rent-seeking.

Vulnerability 2: Weak analysis of catering cost control

Catering revenue is an important source of operating income for senior citizens, and the level of catering services is directly related to the reputation and operational efficiency of senior citizens. Generally speaking, there are still the following problems in the catering cost management of the nursing institutions:

1. The catering cost control link is not clear. In the process of catering cost control, raw material processing and cooking production process is often difficult to control, because the kitchen staff are mostly professional and technical personnel, product quality and technical requirements are high, while the cost requirements are not high. So raw materials from entering the kitchen to the final dishes out, this process belongs to the cost control of the "gray box" process, if the kitchen production costs are too high, are unable to find the cost of the cause of the problem.

2. Catering cost control system is not perfect. Many nursing institutions in the management information system construction is still relatively weak, in the catering cost control information construction is still in a blank state. Coupled with the lack of systematic, standardized operating procedures and standards, which makes the catering cost data information can not flow, the formation of "information islands", affecting the nursing institutions or departmental managers of decision-making.

3. Catering cost variance analysis is weak. Catering cost variance analysis is mainly used to analyze the difference between the actual cost and the approved standard cost, when the cost difference is obvious, the need for cost control links to sort out, analyze the specific aspects of the cost of abnormalities, find the right problem, identify the causes, and implement effective measures to control. A lot of pension institutions catering cost control duties are handed over to the Ministry of Finance, there is no specialized catering cost control supervision department, can not plan, budget and control costs, the lack of necessary cost control information feedback channel.

Vulnerability 3: the elderly room cost expenditure composition is unreasonable

Bed income is one of the important components of the operating income of the nursing institutions, the nursing department is responsible for all the rooms and beds cleaning and cleaning work, and to ensure that a variety of nursing work supplies and configuration. Due to the many links involved in the management of room costs in nursing institutions, there are many hidden problems in the management of their costs, as follows:

1. The control of the purchasing volume of room items is not reasonable. The orderly arrangement of the room goods procurement is the basic guarantee for the normal operation of the nursing service. If you can not reasonably determine the scale of the number of items purchased, the value of money, procurement time and product quality, etc., it is easy to lead to unnecessary costs. Pension institutions room disposable products demand and use a large amount, which brings a certain pressure on the procurement work, a large number of purchases, easy to lead to inventory backlogs and capital consumption; many times in small quantities of procurement, although it saves money, but it will lead to an increase in transportation costs.

2. The proportion of nursing labor cost expenditure is high. Nursing care services is the basic composition of the elderly service, the elderly in nursing institutions room area occupies the vast majority of the total area, at the same time, the number of caregivers accounted for about 80% of the total staff, so the nursing labor cost expenditures is an important part of the cost control of nursing institutions. Personnel scheduling, flexible wages and flexible configuration of the number of personnel directly determines the high and low labor costs.

3. Room energy consumption costs are more serious waste. The elderly room every day need to spend a lot of water and electricity and other energy, some of which is necessary, but also due to negligence or loss of control caused by the cost of waste. Although some of the elderly organizations have developed their own management approach, but the room "running, dripping and leaking" and other phenomena occur from time to time, long bright lights, air conditioning in the spare room, etc., have increased the operating costs of the room.

Vulnerability 4: Inventory cost management content is not clear

Nursing institutions involved in the operation of a large number of materials, commodities and other varieties of great differences between some need to be refrigerated storage, some do not need to go through the warehouse directly into the kitchen, and some of the need to purchase a large number of, which gives the inventory management work has brought a great deal of difficulty and problems. This makes inventory management very difficult and problematic.

1. Warehouse storage system is not sound. Considering the characteristics of the elderly institutions operating, the number of materials out of the warehouse every day, different categories, which brings a lot of pressure to the institution's inventory work, inventory and preservation of materials are difficult, which inadvertently increased the loss. Due to the heavy workload of the treasurer and inventory errors and other subjective and objective reasons, resulting in the loss of inventory materials also occur from time to time, which have increased the cost of elderly institutions inventory expenditure.

2. Inventory management is not perfect. Pensioners' organizations have loopholes in the inventory management system, in the inspection process, only the cost accountant and the treasurer to carry out the relevant vouchers and items checking, which not only brings a lot of pressure to the inventory work, and due to the lack of effective supervision and management system, it is easy to lead to the quality of the goods does not meet the standard, the account does not match the appearance of the situation. The use of substandard products may not only have an adverse impact on customers, but also directly affect the brand reputation of the nursing home.

Three of the four major causes of cost management problems in nursing institutions

Through the analysis of the problems of cost management in nursing institutions, it can be seen that there are still a lot of nursing institutions in the purchasing, catering, room and inventory, etc. There is still room for improvement and enhancement. These specific problems are generated by the deep-seated impact of the motivation, and therefore, the need to go through the phenomenon of the problem, to dig deep analysis of the causes, the only way to prescribe the right medicine, to take targeted cost management measures.

(a) cost management lack of strategic planning

Many of the elderly institutions operating and development scale is still relatively small, the market operating position of the ambiguity of the elderly institutions is the lack of systematic concepts to guide the long-term development planning, strategic planning and implementation of the idea has not yet been a clear idea, and did not study the cost of the elderly institutions of the strategic management of the problem.

(2) cost management responsibility for the main target is not clear

Most of the managers of the elderly institutions focus on service management, market development and external relations coordination above, for how to strengthen the cost of management and other work, the lack of specialists responsible for, which also makes the internal cost management of the elderly institutions in the long term in a state of backwardness.

Nursing institutions in the cost control there is still a "headache, foot" problem, has not yet realized the cost of management of the whole process of control. Pension institutions on the cost control is still limited to the traditional cost of raw materials, such as expenditure, labor costs and other cost management, not from the strategic cost management or cost link value chain perspective to analyze the cost of content, which also leads to the cost of pension institutions is too superficial and localized cost management. Pension institutions in the cost control link there is still a blind spot, the cost of the chain of knowledge is not enough.

(D) cost management measures implementation is not strong enough

Many nursing institutions in the catering cost control, storage goods management and warehousing acceptance and other aspects of the management measures are still relatively weak, part of the management measures to develop a lack of basis and specific standards, so that the implementation of the relevant departments have difficulties, mostly based on experience in the operation. From the perspective of financial management, the current implementation of the elderly institutions is the performance cost assessment and budget management, due to the lack of market research and relevant basis for the budget process, making its guiding status greatly reduced, reducing its guiding value. At the same time, the performance appraisal indicators are mostly top-down impact decomposition, the determination of the indicators of arbitrariness, which also affects the staff to implement measures of enthusiasm and initiative.

Four, the elderly institutions control operating costs of the six strategies

1. Maintain the rate of fixed assets

The depreciation of fixed assets is fixed, there is no space to reduce, only through the completion of the aspects of the work. Improve the rate of fixed assets, you can reduce the renewal expenditure, save repair costs.

2. Control of disposable products

The use of disposable products in nursing institutions is often the most, although the price is not high, but the accumulation of waste will lead to an unnecessary increase in costs, so the need to control disposable products. When the nursing staff replenishes and replaces the disposable products in the room, they should fill in the "Room Disposable Consumable Products Statistical Table", and the attendants will receive the disposable products with the "Room Disposable Consumable Products Statistical Table", and the number of the actual number of the disposable products received should be equal to the number of the disposable products consumed. The director of the nursing department carefully examined the authenticity of the number of use.

3. Strengthen procurement and warehouse management, reduce procurement costs and inventory backlog costs

Purchasing is an important part of cost control. The energy consumption aspect of the room can not be separated from the procurement. And from the point of view of cost reduction, the main thing is to compare the goods, and strive to use the least amount of money to buy the best quality things. Purchasing and warehousing should communicate in a timely manner to find a balance between volume purchasing and inventory, that is, the economic order quantity, which is the most important point. The economic order quantity model should be established according to the cost of inventory, storage cost and shortage cost, the optimal order lot is the order quantity that minimizes the sum of order cost, storage cost and shortage cost. After calculating the economic order quantity through the model, it is easy to find out the most appropriate time to purchase goods.

4. Compression of energy consumption

Some of the elderly institutions built a long time, some of the equipment is aging backward, and often failures, so the energy consumption, and maintenance fees are also a large cost expenditure. Nowadays, many elderly institutions use central air conditioning, which consumes a lot of electricity. Some institutions in order to save energy, take to limit the opening hours of air conditioning, reducing the quality of service, causing dissatisfaction of the elderly and their families, complaints, affecting the clientele, the result is not worth the loss. The hot water in the rooms is mostly supplied by boilers, which is very expensive. Suggested conversion to solar water heater, both environmental protection, and cost savings. Public **** space and meeting rooms use more energy-saving LED bulbs. Executive offices to implement energy-saving measures for people to go out of lights.

5. Strengthen the management of room items

Due to frequent washing, bedding loss is large. It is recommended that bedding such as sheets, duvet covers and pillowcases be purchased in fabrics that are as wear-resistant as possible and are not too thick.

6. Labor cost management and mobilization of staff motivation

As a labor-intensive service enterprises, the quality of service mainly depends on the quality of front-line service personnel, service awareness. So for these characteristics, the stability of the workforce, reduce the cost of human resources, mobilize employees to participate in cost management enthusiasm, should be mentioned in the first place.

The control of labor costs, can be in accordance with the nursing workload staffing, increase the average salary of personnel, the use of personnel for maximum benefit. On the basis of the implementation of a monthly base salary for caregivers, the implementation of the corresponding incentive program, so that those who can get more.

V. Summary

Cost control of a nursing home, the need to explore and research from various aspects of the nursing home's own structure of the relevant analysis, better to identify and solve the relevant problems. In the current market competition in the senior care industry is becoming more and more intense environment, the senior care institutions to have better development, not to be eliminated by the market, not only to set up "so that the elderly comfortable, so that the family rest assured that" business philosophy, the senior care institutions, each employee training, instilling the concept of cost control, so that each employee to take ownership of the spirit of participation to the Open source activities to cut costs.

Cost control strategies for senior living institutions Part 2

With the accelerating aging of China's population, the work of pension insurance in state-owned enterprises, there are certain problems. The harmonious development of society and the economic benefits of enterprises have had a certain impact. Pension insurance in state-owned enterprises to analyze the problem, and put forward a targeted reform. It is the main basis for ensuring the better development of enterprise units. For the future development of enterprise units, only the work of pension insurance has been strengthened, in order to improve the overall state-owned enterprises.

First, the current state of pension insurance in state-owned enterprises

Looking back at the development of China's society, China's state-owned enterprises in the work of pension insurance, has now achieved remarkable results. For the enterprise unit personnel pension insurance sharing situation, has formed a tripartite *** with the state. And these three parties represent respectively: individuals and enterprises and the government. The formation of this state also reflects the emergence of a new mechanism. The cost of pension insurance is more reasonable, and the fund is relatively stable. This not only reduces the burden on enterprises and the government, but also increases the willingness of employees to contribute to the insurance. In order for the combination of individual users and social integration to take shape, it is necessary to implement a model that prioritizes fairness and efficiency, which is the only way to be taken seriously by state-owned enterprises. It is only in this way that the principle of social equity and the high level of contribution of laborers can be reflected and valued. According to the principle of multi-level construction of pension insurance, it can be seen that the basic security is the transformation of welfare distribution. The savings insurance, basic insurance, and supplementary insurance that employees should bear are transformed into a situation where the individual, the enterprise, and the government all bear the same burden. When the government assumes insurance for employees, it only assumes limited liability insurance, which reduces the risk of high welfare. Due to the aging phenomenon of our country's population is more prominent, the government in order to be able to make our country's social and economic system, but also in the normal operation of the stable development. Part of the implementation of the cumulative system, not only can make China's national conditions can be rectified, but also can make the role of pension insurance to play a full play. Although at this stage, China's pension policy has achieved better results, but there are still some relatively realistic `problems still exist. For example: some state-owned enterprises to change the system, or state-owned enterprises facing bankruptcy, as well as the economic performance of some state-owned enterprises, the situation of slippage. For the existence of these problems, it is easy to reduce the number of enterprises for the enterprise personnel insurance. Most state-owned enterprises prefer to use foreign labor or rural labor. Or enterprise management, the staff within the enterprise to change more frequently, so that some state-owned enterprises, and did not pay attention to the real significance of pension insurance. Some state-owned enterprises do not pay attention to the treatment, or the system and mechanism and other aspects of the formation of a large number of staff loss, resulting in the number of contribution interruptions also appeared to rise. The existence of these problems will make many state-owned enterprises in the staff to bear the pension insurance contributions, there are many problems and difficulties, will make the legitimate rights and interests of the staff to be damaged.

The problems of pension insurance in state-owned enterprises

The problems of pension insurance in state-owned enterprises in China are not a one-time occurrence, but also due to the fact that in the process of development, not much attention was paid to the problems that existed, which has led to the evolution of this more complex problem. For the occurrence of this situation, we have to pay attention to, and analyze the problems. The phenomenon of empty accounts in state-owned enterprises is more prominent. Funding model using partial accumulation is the main way of China's pension insurance system. The adoption of this mode is relatively beneficial to new employees of state-owned enterprises. 4%-8% contribution range for the individual employee's contribution ratio. The composition of the pension requires two parts, one for the basic pension; one for the individual account pension. However, the pension insurance adopts the transition time is not very long, if the enterprise elderly in the case of no account, will lead to the lack of funds to accumulate the state. If there is a shortage of funds account in the enterprise, the time worked before the creation of the account can be regarded as the staff personal contributions, subject to the limitation of the number of years, which will lead to the lack of accumulation of funds. In addition, when the funds are still in operation, the payment method for pension insurance is still pay-as-you-go. This has led to the increase in the funding gap in the form of pension insurance in China is still intensifying. In some state-owned enterprises, due to the relatively small number of new employees, the preparation of funds can not be given in a timely manner, which leads to the enterprise in the issuance of pension insurance, some of the enterprise's old employees can not immediately get. The development of such a unified account combined situation, so that in the future development process, can give the source of funds a more serious test.

Three, state-owned enterprises in the work of pension insurance measures to solve the countermeasures

Only the state-owned enterprises in the work of pension insurance problems, give timely solution, can make our country's pension insurance work, in the future development can be improved. So that it can be in the current development of the new situation, can be adapted. For the improvement of the pension insurance system, as well as the adjustment of the system, it is necessary to analyze the following points. First, the staff pension insurance system should be integrated. First of all, when reforming the system, it is necessary to prevent the creation of another stove. The pension insurance system should be constructed in such a way as to reflect the combination of the employees' pension insurance system and the characteristics of the enterprise. Secondly, the pension insurance benefits for retired employees should be generally consistent. So that they can achieve the obligation and the right is equal to the relationship. Secondly, the staff of the enterprise should raise the awareness of the insurance and improve the quality of service. In order to make the enterprise staff's awareness of the ideological improvement, the enterprise management personnel need to carry out education and training on a regular basis. So that it can make the staff's service consciousness has been strengthened. In addition, the staff also need to have the courage to explore the spirit, with the spirit of learning, can make their own knowledge level can be effectively improved. Due to the current stage of the enterprise staff's awareness of insurance is still relatively weak, so that enterprises should strengthen the staff education and publicity and other activities, can make the staff's awareness of insurance has improved. Thirdly, the government can give retirees economic subsidies in accordance with national standards for gradual improvement. Through the survey statistics found that there are still some retirees, their own pension problems, can not be given to solve. The existence of this phenomenon also indirectly reflects that the government, for this kind of retired staff economic subsidies, the government gives relatively little. Only by improving the economic subsidies for the retirees can people realize the warmth of the society. To summarize in order to make the country's level of economic development has been improved, do a good job in the state-owned enterprises within the pension insurance work, is essential. For the state, the pension insurance work to ensure that the development of society can be stabilized, can make the enterprise to get the fairness, as well as the justice of the guarantee. The traditional way of thinking to give the break, and constantly strengthen the sense of innovation, is the current enterprise managers should do. Not only to make the real effect of the pension insurance work to play, but also make the state-owned enterprises, in the future development of the road, play the role of escort.

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