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Reporting Practices and Ethics

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Reporting Practices and Ethics
HCS/405

Introduction Planning, controlling, organizing and decision making make up the four elements of financial management Baker (2011). Standards and guidelines of financial reporting are known as generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) ("Accounting Principles & General Financial Ethical Standards", 2014). Financial ethics and standards determine the success of an organization. The VA is accused of the death of over 1000 waiting for care and budget mismanagement (“Bad VA care may have killed more than 1,000 veterans, senator's report says,” 2014). The alleged deaths could have been avoided through the use of GAAP. The FBI has uncovered millions of Medicare fraud rings (“More Than 20 People Arrested Following Investigations into Widespread Health Care Fraud in D.C. Medicaid Program ” 2014,).
The Four Elements of Financial Management
According to Baker (2011), the four elements of financial management are: planning, controlling, organizing and decision making. Planning is the stage of identifying the organizations objectives and steps to obtain the objectives. Controlling allows management to measure data from previous and current reports to determine changes within the organization as needed. Organizing is the stage in which management coordinates each aspect of the plan, such as; who, what, when and where. Decision making is management’s final role in making an educated decision based on the other four elements of financial management. Through planning, controlling, organizing, management can effectively carry out the decision making process with knowledge.

Generally Accepted Accounting Principles Generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) establishes a uniform measureable standards, guidelines and principles of financial accounting and reporting, ("Generally Accepted Accounting Principles",

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