A comparison of social accounting between local public healthcare services:An empirical research

Abstract

Introduction: Social accounting in healthcare is a quantitative–qualitative accounting tool which marks the bond between the business and its social background. It displays healthcare business results and information to the stakeholder. Actually, its use is not widespread in Italy, but often published in United States and other Countries.

Methods: This work is based upon an empirical research, studying social accounting from Local Health Units (LHU, Italian ASL) of Adria, Brindisi, Firenze and Umbria region published between 2006 and 2008. These documents have been analyzed, studying the business’ structure, healthcare services, social and economical conditions, financial status, performance indexes and much more data about most company activities.

Results: Accountability in Italy has been studied carefully through longitudinal and cross sectional analysis, observing models and contents, elaborating a concrete proposal for social accounting.

Discussion: Social accounting in healthcare can guarantee important information for non-expert users and expert technicians, allowing the former to take more conscious decisions, and the latter to study its business aspects more deeply. This is made possible by the consideration of extended economical data available in other accountability forms (like annual financial statement), and other performance indexes which give valuable data about social impact, efficiency and effectiveness to the end user.