Understanding Vital Balance Sheet and Income Statement Components
By Dr. David Edward Marcinko; MBA, CMP™
By Dr. Gary L. Bode; MSA, CPA, CMP™
Financial ratios are derived from components of the balance sheet and income statement. These short and long-term financial ratio values are “benchmarked” to values obtained in medical practice management surveys that become industry standards. Often they become de facto economic indicators of entity viability, and should be monitored by all financial executives regularly.
Defining Terms
One of the most useful liquidity ratios related to ARs is the current ratio. It is mathematically defined as: current assets/current liabilities. The current ratio is important since it measures short-term solvency, or the daily bill-paying ability of a medical practice, clinic or hospital; etc. Current assets include cash on hand (COH), and cash in checking accounts, money market accounts, money market deposit accounts, US Treasury bills, inventory, pre-paid expenses, and the percentage of ARs that can be reasonably expected to be collected. Current liabilities are notes payable within one year. This ratio should be at least 1, or preferably in the range of about 1.2 to 1.8 for medical practices.
Other Ratios
The quick ratio is similar to the current ratio. However, unlike the current ratio, the quick ratio does not include money tied up in inventory, since rapid conversion to cash might not be possible in an economic emergency. A reasonable quick ratio would be 1.0 – 1.3 for a hospital, since this ratio is a more stringent indicator of liquidity than the current ratio.
Assessment
A point of emphasis in the case of both the current ratio and the quick ratio is that higher is not necessarily better. Higher ratios denote a greater capacity to pay bills as they come due, but they also indicate that the entity has more cash tied up in assets that have a relatively low rate of earnings. Hence, there is an optimum range for both ratios: they should be neither too low nor too high.
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