A qualitative study on the position and importance of medical accounting in private health institutions

Invoicing the costs and expenses incurred by private health institutions as a result of service delivery to the Social Security Institution (SSI) in accordance with the rules and all of the activities of organising, following, collecting and coordinating these transactions are called medical accounting. In this research, the concept of medical accounting and the place of medical accounting in health management are explained. Within the scope of the research, the data obtained from the interviews conducted with the medical accounting officials of eight private hospitals in Balıkesir, Istanbul and Sakarya provinces were analyzed with the MAXQDA software. As a result of the research, it was seen that medical accounting was defined by the participants as "the unit that creates the rules and functioning to report to SSI and the heart of the hospital". It has been stated that medical accounting processes are effective from the first step of the patient to the hospital until the patient leaves the hospital and that medical accountants should be in interaction with all units of the hospital in these processes and that they have responsibilities to provide training to other units. Since medical accounting transactions require mastery of the health field, it has been determined that individuals graduated from the department of health management should have priority in the recruitment process, but medical accounting is generally learnt in the field due to insufficient knowledge of medical accounting. If medical accounting is not given the necessary importance, the institution will be exposed to penal sanctions to be imposed by the SSI as well as income losses. The parameters emphasise the increasing importance of medical accounting, given that the health institution does not have the authority to independently price the health service it provides and the penal sanctions for problems that may be encountered in invoice reviews by the SSI.