Abstract. The concept of Activity-Based Costing (ABC) provides informational support to the performance of key management activities in different organizations. Focused on activities and processes within the organization, this concept, using appropriate cost drivers, provides more accurate information on activity costs and costs objects. The paper analyzes the specificities of applying the traditional and improved model of activity-based costing in health organizations.Key words: health care organizations, costing, activities, cost drivers
INTRODUCTIONAs organizations that exist and work in order to provide the general well-being of society as a whole, certain groups of people and individuals, nonprofit organizations do not have in their focus achieving their own profit or high wages of their individual employees. The primary purpose of establishment and functioning of the nonprofit organizations is contented in providing the goods and services that a society asks for but profit organizations cannot or do not provide. This fact makes the nonprofits significant factor of functioning for many national economies. Nonprofit organizations are, in principle, relatively easy to "identify" if it starts from the fact that these organizations, in order to cover their costs, perform a wide range of operations and activities on a nonprofit base, that are aimed at providing certain services to the wider community. These are public (collective) goods, such as health care, education, social protection, transport infrastructure, culture and arts, which are of common interest and are needed for the particular community to function normally. Due to specific effects achieved through the provision of health care and protection, nonprofit organizations in health care sector deserve a special attention. Consequently, the business goals of these organizations are not profit-oriented, but have non-economic nature and their human character is dominant -to provide services that will meet the needs of preserving the health of people in a given community. Therefore, social responsibility in carrying out the objectives is largely expressed in health and other nonprofit organizations.The dominance of non-economic objectives, that are not easy to follow, as well as to monitor the effects of their realization, make the process of identification, control and improvement the measures of effective functioning of these organizations fairly complex. Thus, the objective function of a health care organization depends on the board of directors, type of services, respective financing, level of competition, and the current financial condition of the organization (Hughes & Luksetich, 2010, p. 121) Various objectives have been formulated in models, including social welfare, quality and quantity maximization, budget, inputs, equity, and even profit. The objective should be consistent with the competitive and legal environment and flexible enough to deal with changing business conditions.Considering that health care organizations should primarily achieve re...