RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COST AND EXPENSES STRUCTURE AND PERFORMANCE: STUDY IN HOSPITALS OF NORTH TO SOUTH OF BRAZIL

Abstract

The aims of this study was to identify the structure of costs and expenses of Brazilian hospitals and to analyze the association between the proportion of fixed costs and expenses with their performance. To do so, through a descriptive, quantitative and survey research, data for 21 hospitals characterized as private and philanthropic, located in the north, south, east and west center of the country were evaluated. For the analysis of data collected in managerial cost reports of hospitals, the means and scatterplots were used as descriptive statistics. To verify the significance of the findings nonparametric chi square (c2) test was used. The results showed that due to the higher proportion of fixed costs, the sample of hospitals, mostly, have higher leverage, so that a small change in the volume of net revenue results in wide variation in profit. As for the performance indices, it can be seen that on average the sample hospitals had close to zero results, getting the operating margin to 0.06, the return on assets to 0.01 and return on equity with 0.04. The separation of hospitals between those with fixed costs and expenses below average and above average, the findings showed that the higher fixed costs and expenses the higher operating margin, return on assets remains the same and the return on equity decreases. However, it found no statistically significant association.