Abstract
Introduction: Financial statements of public hospitals provide information to those who have a reasonable interest in their financial position and performance (e.g. the Parliament, the Regional Health Authorities, the Ministry of Health, the taxpayers, the suppliers, etc.). The information provided is useful to users for accountability purposes and decision making.
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the preparation of audited financial statements, the benchmarking of key operational and financial figures, the analysis of financial figures with cost indicators and the qualitative analysis of certified public accountants’ (CPAs) audit reports.
Methodology: The audited Financial Statements as well as yearly hospital activity data from Business Intelligence (B.I.) Platform were collected and processed. The quantitative data characterizing operational and financial performance of public hospitals were compared, through timeseries analysis.
Results: The analysis demonstrates key financial figures for the period from 2014 until 2018 namely receivables, cash and cash equivalents, short-term liabilities, operating income, operating expenses and net profit or loss. Moreover, bed occupancy rate, cost per inpatient and cost per inpatient day are calculated at both hospital and health region level.
Conclusions: The analysis provides useful information about operational and financial performance of public hospitals. Many hospitals lack timeliness, due to unpublished annual financial reports. Cash accumulation and decline in short-term liabilities were observed, while in total the operating income is higher than the operating expenditure of public hospitals. The financials are fairly presented with the exception of some specified areas. Suggestions are made for improvement and speculating on future directions.
