Abstract During recent years the role of the U.S. government has increased the scope of operations of nonprofit-oriented organizations. The recently-enacted Medicare legislation is a case in point. This act promotes the production and consumption of health services. The purpose of this article is to focus attention on some of the accounting problems of public health nursing associations. organizations. In general, these associations are tax-exempt as a nonprofit, charitable institution; but their behavior is that of any business enterprise engaged in the production and distribution of a consumer service under various conditions of market competition. They use costs and prices, as well as every other market mechanism reflecting a business culture. Questions have been raised with regard to principles and practices as they relate to statement presentation, disclosure and materiality criteria, cost accounting for pricing purposes, the entity concept, and a variety of other matters. This discussion, it has been hoped, will stimulate interest in some of the difficulties faced in accounting for nonprofit-oriented enterprise in general and in accounting problems of public health nursing agencies in particular.
Jack Topiol (Sat,) studied this question.