Financial Management for Pharmacists: A Decision-Making Approach

Financial Management for Pharmacists, 4th edition, was developed to meet the need for a pharmacy text that covers the basics of financial accounting, managerial accounting, finance, and pharmacoeconomics. The goal of the text is to provide pharmacy students and managers with financial management tools that they can use to make decisions about common management problems and to better understand the impact of those decisions. The book begins with a basic introduction to reading and interpreting financial statements (Chapters 1 and 2). Chapters 3 through 13 deal with those managerial accounting and finance topics of greatest relevance to pharmacy managers. These include financial statement analysis, budgeting, cash budgeting, improving cash flow, break-even analysis, sources and uses of cash, capital budgeting, and inventory control. Three of these chapters discuss pricing and reimbursement. Chapter 9 illustrates how to estimate the costs of providing a good or service and discusses non-cost factors that affect pricing. Chapter 10 discusses third-party reimbursement for pharmacy products and Chapter 11 discusses reimbursement for pharmacy services such as medication therapy management. Chapters 14 and 15 provide a basic introduction to pharmacoeconomics, including budget impact analysis and decision analysis. Besides explaining and demonstrating the necessary calculations, these chapters demonstrate the use of financial management and pharmacoeconomic techniques to address common managerial problems. This is done through use of detailed examples and problems. For example, the chapter on break-even analysis demonstrates use of the technique in pricing and advertising decisions, and the chapter on pricing explains how to calculate the cost of providing a diabetic care counseling and monitoring service. The decision analysis chapter provides an example of using decision analysis and budget impact analysis for formulary decision making. The text includes learning objectives at the beginning of each chapter and questions and problems at the end of each chapter. Answers are provided for the questions and problems.