Financial management applications in health institutions

Increasing the share of budget at the health sector over the years, creating the problem of evaluating this amount. If the allocation to health is managed effectively, both resource waste is prevented and it is provided to be given the right service to the right person who need. The increase in the supply of healthcare leads to increase in demand. Health institutions have to regulate increasing healthcare demands through various financial management policies. Health institutions which perform the majority of health expenditures, have to ensure managing costs for health services and all kinds of resources of institutions effectively. Effectiveness of financial management means directing resources to the right choices in terms of investment and financing decisions. Managers who perform these choices have to act with information which is received from the accounting system. Accounting system's producing right information about financial management, guides decision makers in decision processes. Transferring the information provided by accounting regularly and systematically to the management is possible with management accounting. In this research, surveys and interviews with managers at the secondary and tertiary public-private health institutions were used. Primarily, obtaining information about general financial process is aimed. Then, problems of health institutions about financial operations and management policies they implement for these problems were determined. Another aim of the research is to determine the workability of management accounting applications and web systems of Turkish Ministry of Health in health institutions. Finally, contributions of all financial management methods to health institutions were questioned. According to the results, even if public and private healthcare institutions experience financial problems at certain levels, they can overcome these problems with their management policies. It is determined that the most used management accounting methods are respectively: activity-based budgeting, benchmarking, profitability analysis and traditional costing techniques. The most used web systems of Turkish Ministry of Health that provide data to the managers are respectively: ÇKYS-TSIM, patient rights, electronic document management system and decision support systems. Another result which is obtained from the research that financial management methods contribute to public and private health institutions. It is also determined that managers have awareness of financial management and management accounting applications.