Chapter 9: Budgeting the Plan

9.1 BUDGETING PROCESS OVERVIEW

Preparing a budget proposal to support the projects that will no doubt emerge from efforts to comply with HIPAA requirements is similar to any other budget preparation evolution. In fact, finding funding for HIPAA related projects may even be somewhat easier in that the HIPAA regulations have hard dates set for organizations to achieve compliance and this set of regulations carries the weight of law. So, from the perspective of having to justify cost expenditures, a good portion of your case is already made. There are two primary components to the budgeting process. These components are as follows :

• Preparing the budget and getting approval

• Implementing the proposal and managing the approved expenditures

This section will outline some important considerations with respect to preparing budget proposals including provisioning the appropriate resources, determining costs, writing the proposal and reviewing some tools to assist in this process.

Key to any budget preparation is understanding the costs involved in the project plans you need management to approve. We will look at how to assess these costs and how to create the case for justifying expenditures. We also need to understand the audience that will ultimately review and approve the project plans that will get us to HIPAA compliance. Those that are close to the planning process very likely have a keen grasp of the intricacies of the plans and what they are designed to achieve from a technical perspective. However, at some point, that understanding has to be articulated to elements of the organization that may not see things quite the way you do. In fact, the higher up the organization we go, the more likely it is that their perspective will be based on entirely different criteria. The challenge, of course, is to try and make our message heard , and to do it in a way that gets the attention of the right people in the enterprise.