Regional Differences in the Management and Financial Performance of Hospitals in Hungary
Abstract
Subject and purpose of work:
The NUTS2 regions of Hungary show great differences in economic and social terms. For example, in the Budapest region, GDP per capita is around 150% of the EU27 average, while in half of the NUTS2 regions GDP per capita is below 50% of the EU27 average. Can these regional differences be observed in the management and operation of hospitals in Hungary?
Materials and methods:
The balance sheets and income statements of the hospitals were collected from the CREFOPORT database and the missing financial statements were requested directly from the hospitals. The capacity and performance data used in addition to the financial data were taken from the annual statements available on the NEAK website. The data were collected in December 2021 and the beginning of 2022. Specific indicators were constructed from the financial and performance data. The relationships between indicators and regions were first tested by analysis of variance using the ANOVA menu in SPSS. This was followed by a Bonferroni test.
Results:
For wealth indicators and profitability data, the closeness of the relationship is medium for most indicators, but no significant difference was found for any region using post-hoc tests except for one indicator. The indicator ETA shows a weak to medium strength relationship between liquidity indicators and NUTS2 classification, but with Bonferroni post-hoc tests no significant difference between regions except for one relationship (2016, Budapest-Pest). The same can be said when examining occupational indicators.
Conclusions:
There are two- to threefold differences between the minimum and maximum values of GDP per capita and the average income of the regions. However, public hospitals in regions with different levels of development do not show significant differences from a financial and professional point of view. Thus, hospitals with different financial and professional situations are not associated with regions of different development.
© 2023 Erika Horváthné Csolák, Zoltán Musinszki, Katalin Lipták, published by John Paul II University of Applied Sciences
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.