Resumen de Does the healthcare industry report quality costs? Comparative investigations of public and private hospitals

Ali Uyar, Arzu Neyis

• The present study investigates whether the public and private Turkish healthcare industries report quality costs comparatively. We preferred to adopt a structured interview methodology which enabled us to ask pre-determined questions during the interviews. We conducted interviews with the quality personnel and accounting personnel of five public and four private hospitals. In all analysed hospitals, we found out that quality costs are not measured, accounted for, reported, and analysed. The findings indicate that the hospitals conduct quality-related studies without interaction with accounting departments and without cost consideration. All hospitals generate many examples of various types of quality costs such as prevention, appraisal, internal failure, and external failure costs. However, the monetary amounts of four quality cost types are not known since the hospitals do not use this classification, and do not account for these quality costs. We believe that the present study has changed the perceptions of hospital managers, and has improved their awareness of the subject.