Content
About the statistics
Definitions
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Name and topic
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Name: Health accounts
Topic: National accounts and business cycles
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Responsible division
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Division for National Accounts
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Definitions of the main concepts and variables
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Se Allso Concepts and definitions in national accounts
Total expenditure on health measures the final consumption of health care goods and services (i.e. current health expenditures) in addition to capital investment in health care infrastructure. This includes spending by public and private sources (including households) on medical goods and services, public health, preventive health care programmes and administration. The two major components of total current health expenditure are expenditure on personal health care and expenditure on collective services. Personal health care services comprise curative care, rehabilitation, long-term health care, ancillary health care services, and medical goods dispensed to out-patients. Collective services comprise public health tasks such as health promotion and disease prevention services and health administration, which are delivered to society at large.
Health expenditure also includes expenditure on health care and social services. According to international guidelines only expenditure for health care and social services that are health related should be included in the health accounts. Long-term nursing care is typically a mix of medical care and social care. Thus only the former is included here.
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Standard classifications
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The System of Health Accounts
The System of Health Accounts is organised around a tri-axial system of recording the health expenditure. The expenditure is grouped into the three following categories:
- health care by function (HC)
- health care service provider industries (HP)
- sources of funding (HF)
Functional classification of health care
The functional approach refers to the goals or purposes of health care. Different producers may provide the same kind of health care functions, i.e. hospitals or diagnostic laboratories could provide diagnostic imaging. The functional classifications are as follows:
HC.1
Curative care
HC.1.1
Inpatient curative care
HC.1.2
Day curative care
HC.1.3
Outpatient curative care
HC.1.3.1
General outpatient curative care
HC.1.3.2
Dental outpatient curative care
HC.1.3.3
Specialised outpatient curative care
HC.1.3.9
All other outpatient curative care
HC.2
Rehabilitative care
HC.3
Long-term care (health)
HC.3.1
Inpatient long-term care (health)
HC.3.4
Home-based long-term care (health)
HC.4
Ancillary services
HC.4.1-4.2
Clinical laboratory and diagnostic imaging
HC.4.3
Patient transportation
HC.5
Medical goods dispensed to out-patients
HC.5.1
Pharmaceuticals and other medical non durable goods
HC.5.1.1-5.1.2
Medicines (prescribed and over-the-counter)
HC.5.1.3
Other medical non-durable goods
HC.5.2
Therapeutic appliances and other medical durable goods
HC.5.2.1
Glasses and other vision products
HC.5.2.2
Hearing aids
HC.5.2.3
Orthopaedic appliances and other prosthetics
HC.5.2.9
Medico-technical devices, including wheelchairs
HC.6
Preventive care
HC.6. 1
Information, education and counseling programmes
HC.6. 4
Healthy condition monitoring programmes
HC.7
Governance and health system and financing administration
HK.1
Capital formation of health care provider institutions (excl. Research and Development
HKR.4
Research and Development in Health
For cross-classifications of the functional approach with the SNA 93 functional classifications, like COFOG (classification of the functions of government) and COICOP (classification of individual consumption by purpose), see: A System of Health Accounts .
Classification of health care providers
A classification of health care industries serves the purpose of arranging country specific institutions into common internationally applicable categories. The provider classification comprises both primary and secondary producers of health care services. The classification of health care provider industries is listed in the table below:
HP.1
Hospitals
HP.1.1
General hospitals
HP.1.2
Mental health hospitals
HP.2
Residential long-term care facilities
HP.2.1
Long-term nursing care facilities
HP.3
Providers of ambulatory health care
HP.3.1
Medical practices
HP.3.2
Dental practices
HP.3.3
Other health care practitioners
HP.3.5
Providers of home health care services
HP.4
Providers of ancillary services
HP.4.1
Providers of patient transportation and emergency rescue
HP.4.2
Medical and diagnostic laboratories
HP.5
Retailers and other providers of medical goods
HP.6
Providers of preventive care
HP.7
Health administration etc.
HP.8
Rest of the economy
HP.9
Rest of the world
For cross-classifications of the health care providers with ISIC (International Standard Industrial Classification), see A System of Health Accounts .
Classification of health care financing
In Norway, health care goods and services are financed both by private and public sources. Central government, local government and the social security fund are the public sources, while the private sources mainly consist of household out-of-pocket payments. The classification of health care financing is listed in the table below:
HF.1
General government
HF.1.1
General government excluding social health insurance
HF.1.1.1
Central government
HF.1.1.2
Local/municipal government
HF.1.2
social health insurance (national insurance)
HF.2
Corporations
HF.3
Private household out-of-pocket expenditure
HF.4
Rest of the world
Classification of Institutional sector
The health expenditures are also grouped by producing institutional sector. The institutional sector is a statistical standard used mainly in National Accounts. It splits the Norwegian economy into sectors on the basis of groups of homogeneous institutional units. In Norway, we have 6 main sectors: General government (central and local government), financial corporations, non-financial corporations, non-profit institutions serving households, households and rest of the world. The health expenditures are grouped into:
- Private corporations or imported from abroad
- Central government
- Local government
- Non-profit institutions serving households