Accounting and the 'insoluble' problem of health-care costs

Gebreiter, G.; Ferry, L.

doi:10.1080/09638180.2016.1187073

Accounting and the 'insoluble' problem of health-care costs

Gebreiter, G.; Ferry, L.

Authors

G. Gebreiter

Professor Laurence Ferry laurence.ferry@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

Health service accounting reforms are frequently promoted, explained or justified with reference to aging populations, expensive medical technologies and their purported implications for the cost of health care. Drawing on Foucault’s genealogical method, we examine the emergence of concerns regarding health expenditure in the wake of the creation of the British National Health Service in 1948, and their relationship with health service accounting practices. We argue that concerns regarding the cost of health care are historically contingent rather than inescapable consequences of demographic and technological change, and that health service accounting practices are both constitutive and reflective of such concerns. We conclude by relating our analysis to current attempts to control costs and increase efficiency in the health services.

Citation

Gebreiter, G., & Ferry, L. (2018). Accounting and the 'insoluble' problem of health-care costs. Financial Markets, Institutions and Instruments, 25(4), 719-733. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638180.2016.1187073

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Apr 22, 2016
Online Publication Date	Jun 21, 2016
Publication Date	Oct 1, 2018
Deposit Date	May 15, 2016
Publicly Available Date	Jul 8, 2016
Journal	Financial Markets, Institutions and Instruments
Print ISSN	0963-8008
Electronic ISSN	1468-0416
Publisher	Wiley
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	25
Issue	4
Pages	719-733
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1080/09638180.2016.1187073
Public URL	https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1404577

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance online version © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.