HIM 305 capstone guide: budget tabs, CBA questions, RFP
Four deliverables from one Coppin State scenario: a three-tab Excel operating budget for the HIM department with prescribed rates and AHIMA line items, Word answers to the capital-budget questions, an RFP for outsourced transcription and coding, and a defense of the HIM project against two rivals.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 11, 2026
Which of the three capital projects fits the year's assumptions?
The capstone is four deliverables wearing one scenario, and separating them first prevents the common failure of answering some in prose and forgetting the rest: a three-tab Excel operating budget (salaries yearly, monthly departmental expenses, annual budget), Word-document responses to the capital-budget questions, a Request for Proposal for the transcription and coding services the HIM department wants to outsource, and — inside the questions — a political task, justifying your own department's project against two rivals. The budget's inputs are half prescribed and half researched: the directions fix the escalators (a maximum 5 percent salary increase, 7 percent on supplies, 5 percent elsewhere) and the internal line items (HIP-week luncheon at twelve employees times ten dollars, forty-five dollars per day food allowance, at least ten CEUs per coder), while the AHIMA items — membership dues for the director and every credentialed employee, plus the director's National Convention travel, registration and hotel — must be looked up at current rates, which is the assignment's research-skills check hiding inside a spreadsheet.
The capital-budget questions run on the scenario's three competing projects — the maternity wing's women's-center renovation, cardiology's catheterization lab bet on a newly retired cardiologist, and HIM's own outsourced-transcription-plus-web-coding move requiring an EHR — and the questions are sequenced from analysis to advocacy: what a cost-benefit analysis should consider for each project; whether an RFI, RFP or RFQ is the right instrument at this stage (explain, not just choose — the answer turns on how well-specified the need already is); which single project would likely win approval and why; and how the HIM director would present the department's project most favorably. Answer the approval question with the administration's own stated assumptions — constant revenue, no anticipated capital projects, a Joint Commission visit coming — because the scenario's financial-assumptions paragraph is the scoring key for which project fits the year — read it twice before answering anything.
The RFP is the deliverable with an external genre to honor: real RFPs carry background, scope of services, technical and interface requirements, vendor qualifications, pricing structure, evaluation criteria and a response timeline, and the directions explicitly tell you to research samples — the health-informatics literature on designing RFPs for clinical systems shows the structure at working depth. Write the transcription-and-coding scope from the scenario's specifics: current in-house transcription with overflow outsourced, the move to web-based coding with telecommuting coders, and the EHR dependency. A sourcing note: the record circulated with a full third-party cost-benefit-analysis explainer article pasted after the questions; it is excluded from the brief above, though its presence tells you the instructor expects CBA vocabulary — costs listed, benefits valued honestly, payback time computed — in the questions' answers, applied project by project rather than recited as a definition.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Build a three-tab HIM operating budget applying the prescribed escalators and researched AHIMA dues and convention costs.
- 02Run cost-benefit considerations across the scenario's three competing capital projects.
- 03Choose and defend the right procurement instrument — RFI, RFP or RFQ — for the transcription-and-coding decision's stage.
- 04Argue project approval from the administration's stated financial assumptions rather than department preference.
- 05Draft an RFP with genre-correct sections scoped to the scenario's transcription, coding and EHR specifics.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01Excel budget with three tabs: yearly employee salaries, monthly departmental expenses, annual department budget.
- 02Word-document responses to the capital-budget scenario questions, including the RFI/RFP/RFQ choice explained and the approval-and-advocacy answers.
- 03A Request for Proposal for the transcription and coding service, informed by researched sample RFPs.
- 04AHIMA-derived line items at current rates: dues for director and credentialed staff, convention travel, registration, hotel, and the prescribed food allowance.
How do the budget tabs, questions and RFP divide the work?
The budget, tab by tab
Build salaries (yearly), monthly expenses, and the annual budget, applying the fixed escalators and inserting the researched AHIMA and prescribed internal line items.
CBA across three projects
Answer what a cost-benefit analysis should consider for the women's center, the cath lab, and the HIM outsourcing move — costs, benefit values, payback horizons, and intangibles honestly flagged.
The instrument question
Choose between RFI, RFP and RFQ for the transcription-and-coding need and explain the choice by how specified the requirement already is.
Approval and advocacy
Argue which single project survives the administration's stated assumptions, then make the HIM director's best case: benefits, Joint Commission fit, telecommuting resilience, coding accuracy.
The RFP itself
Draft the RFP with background, scope from the scenario's specifics, technical and interface requirements including the EHR dependency, vendor qualifications, pricing, evaluation criteria and timeline.
Where do AHIMA rates and RFP structure get researched?
Recommended databases
- AHIMA website (current dues and convention costs)
- PMC (RFP design and capital budgeting literature)
- Sample RFP repositories
Search sequence
- 1.Look up current AHIMA membership dues and National Convention registration, travel and hotel figures before building the budget tabs.
- 2.Read an RFP-design article from the health-informatics literature for the section structure and requirement-writing style.
- 3.Review a capital-budgeting fundamentals source so the CBA answers use payback and benefit-valuation language correctly.
- 4.Collect one or two sample RFPs, as the directions instruct, before drafting yours.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Designing a request for proposal for picture archiving and communication system
PMC / National Library of Medicine · 2012
A worked RFP design for a clinical system — the section structure and requirement-writing depth the directions' research-samples instruction points at.
- 02
You want me to write a business plan? Capital budgeting fundamentals for the plastic surgeon
PMC / National Library of Medicine · 2013
Capital-budgeting fundamentals in a clinical setting — payback, benefit valuation and project justification, the vocabulary the capital-budget questions grade.
- 03
Health impact assessment and cost‒benefit analysis: Exploring complementarities of methods to assess the impacts of regulation
PMC / National Library of Medicine · 2025
CBA's method and its honest limits — including the benefit-valuation subjectivity the course's own excluded reading emphasizes — for the considerations question.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Answering the questions and forgetting the artifacts — the budget tabs and the RFP are deliverables, not illustrations.
- Inventing AHIMA dues and convention costs instead of looking up current rates, which is the embedded research check.
- Applying the escalators unevenly; the directions fix 5 percent salaries, 7 percent supplies, 5 percent elsewhere except scenario-specified items.
- Choosing RFP by reflex without explaining why the need's specification stage makes it the right instrument over RFI or RFQ.
- Arguing project approval from departmental enthusiasm when the scenario's financial assumptions paragraph decides it.
- Writing the RFP as a letter instead of the genre: scope, requirements, vendor qualifications, evaluation criteria, timeline.
Submission checklist
- Three Excel tabs complete and internally consistent (salaries roll into the annual budget).
- All prescribed line items present: CEUs per coder, HIP-week luncheon, food allowance, convention costs, dues for every credentialed employee.
- Every capital-budget question answered, with the instrument choice explained.
- Approval and advocacy answers argued from the scenario's stated assumptions.
- RFP scoped to the scenario's transcription/coding/EHR specifics with genre-correct sections.
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.

Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.

Reviewed by
Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.