RESEARCH ON THE FINANCIAL TRANSPARENCY INTO THE HEALTH
PUBLIC SYSTEM IN ROMANIA. CASE OF HOSPITALS SUBORDINATED
                 TO THE HEALTH MINISTRY


       Aurelia Ştefănescu, The Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania
        Eugeniu Ţurlea, The Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania


ABSTRACT: The complexity of the public hospital activity, generated by the high resource
consumption, high number of actors involved into the medical act, technological innovation,
heterogenous healthcare services offered, typology of hospitals, diversity of financing sources and
suppliers of financial resources as potential patients, demands a high degree of financial
transparency. In this context, by the qualitative research performed, we identify the degree of
financial transparency at the level of public hospitals subordinated to the Health Ministry from
Romania. This study takes into consideration a synthesis of the ideas published on this theme into the
professional literature, as well as of the regulations issued by the national and international
accounting regulators, by accounting entities. The results of the research pointed out that the
financial transparency promoted by hospitals through the agency of official web sites is low. For
most of hospitals the financial transparency is limited to the publication of revenue and expenditure
budget. Only three hospitals display the completed financial statements and a reduced number of
hospitals limits financial transparency at the individual level of the budgetary execution account,
ballance sheet and patrimony outcome account. Also, we observe that in geographical terms, there
are no significant differences regarding the hospital financial transparency. In respect of the
temporal view, the published financial information is heterogenous both at individual level and global
level, fact diminishing the comparison in time and space. The difficulty of investigating financial
transparency of hospitals is increased by the difficulty of identifying the official sites of hospitals
when lacking a database at the level of Health Ministry.

Keywords: transparency, financial information, public hospital, stakeholders, Romania

JEL Codes: M41, I100, H83