Health accounts

Abstract

Health accounts are intended to provide a coherent system of information on the economic aspects of health care activity. They constitute a link between traditional health statistics and national accounts and balances in general. Thus, health accounts permit analyzing the role of health both from the point of view of its contribution to the economy and of its role in satisfying important social needs. The existing systems of national accounts and balances (SNA and MPS) contain, explicitly or implicitly, a large amount of information on the production and consumption of medical goods and services. However, this information is spread over various parts of the systems and the relevant data are neither sufficiently detailed nor internationally comparable.

Several countries and international organizations are developing health accounts, and there are similar views as regards their basic structure. The main feature of a system of health accounts is that total expenditure for health services should be shown in three different ways:

(i) composition of inputs and of factors used in the production of health goods and services;

(ii) output of the health sector and distribution of health goods and services among the main types of users actually consuming them; and

(iii) sources of financing of the expenditures on health goods and services.

Each of these three concepts should be cross-classified with the institutional breakdown of the health services.