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Not long ago, chief financial officers (CFOs) in hospitals could focus almost exclusively on financial accounting. Today, however, financial managers must tend diverse tasks of coordination, education, and professional specialization. The authors suggest that those who desire the position of CFO would do well to couple accounting expertise with a capacity to understand ethics and mores, economics, descriptive and predictive statistics, people from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, as well as features of disease, its prevention, and course of treatment.
As the healthcare industry has grown in complexity and sophistication, the responsibility, scope, and authority of healthcare chief financial officers (CFOs) have grown as well. But as the role and career opportunities of today's CFO have increased, so too has the pressure of the job. Diversification of healthcare businesses, quality management initiatives, and healthcare reform efforts, as well as increased cost consciousness, declining censuses, and competition, have all been cited as contributing to the pressure felt by many CFOs.
Additional insight into the career satisfactions, professional concerns, and developmental needs of CFOs in today's healthcare environment may be gained from the results of two surveys. A 1989 survey(a) of chief executive officers (CEOs) in acute care and psychiatric hospitals affiliated with a major for-profit healthcare company found the CEOs had a high degree of satisfaction with their careers, but were less certain regarding potential satisfaction in the future due to contextual changes in the healthcare industry. CEOs listed numerous positive aspects of their careers, but also cited many sources of dissatisfaction. In addition, they noted requirements for new and updated professional skills as CEO responsibilities increase. A similar survey of CFOs within the same institutions was conducted in 1992.
SURVEY METHODOLOGY
Questionnaires guaranteeing respondents anonymity, designed by a consulting firm(b) and corporate human resource managers of the sponsoring healthcare company, were mailed in late 1992 to 121 chief financial officers at hospitals affiliated with the healthcare company. Of the 75 CFOs surveyed in medical-surgical hospitals, the return rate was 91 percent (N=68). Among 46 psychiatric CFOs the return rate was 96 percent (N=44). These surveys included only for-profit hospitals, limiting the breadth of the population being studied. However, other sources of diversity should lend generality to the results. Exhibits 1 and 2 present data on...