Hospitals integrate the cost, care and efficiency benefits of an ambulatory surgery center into a hospital’s overall surgical and specialty care strategy. This unique hybrid brings tremendous value to physicians, patients, employers and hospitals, while providing powerful incentives for solving some of our nations most pressing health care issues. Systematic reporting of the work and finances of hospitals requires government action. Many hospitals are then compelled to keep internal accounts and fill out forms in the same way. Government prescribes the categories according to new financial ideas. Government becomes involved in hospitals as owner, regulator, payer, or creditor.
As it is everywhere, the reporting was shaped by the country's policy priorities. By means of a hierarchy of financial accounts, the public sector's expenditures and property could be aggregated at successively higher tiers. The methodology of financial reporting evolved gradually during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Conventions for writing charts of accounts and assigning items of expenditure to categories developed for hospitals accounting. The reports from the communes are submitted to the representative of the Ministry of Finance in each prefecture and are ultimately forwarded to the Division of Public Accounting. The Division of Public Accounting also studies and updates the accounting methods and drafts changes in the decrees.
The communes followed a strict chart of accounts, a prescribed list of account numbers, and assignment conventions. The hospitals followed the same rules as the other local government agencies. The nomenclature of the expenditures reports included, among others, the following broad categories (that is, a "categorical" and not a "functional" style):
- Personnel
- Materials purchased
- Construction work and furnishings
- Transportation
- Administration
Within each category were specific subparts. For example, under "Materials purchased," items such as food, consumable supplies, and pharmaceuticals were included. Under "Personnel," items such as wages......
