Contemporary costing in the health sector to provide contribution performance reporting for profitability

Contemporary costing systems tend to be activity based costing models and recently, have found their way into the not-for-profit sector. There is a lack of research investigating the profitability within the sector even though there has been significant change. As part of the not-for-profit sector, the New Zealand health sector has gone through significant reforms. Hospitals are now more obliged to provide financial accountability. In other research, activity based costing has been applied to parts of hospitals. This paper assesses and evaluates contemporary costing across a whole district health board and determines the profitability of the not-for-profit services. The results show the application of costing and profitability in the not-for-profit sector and highlights the limited amount of work that has investigated allocation of revenue. This paper appeals for more examination of revenue allocation and profit determination within the not-for-profit sector.