Financial Definitions
Costs Book Manual
[612kb] and
Costs Book Reconciliation to Annual Accounts [67kb] for more detail.
Board Operating Costs - annual costs incurred by a board in running its business of healthcare. This includes capital expenditure.
Capital Expenditure - comprises additions to Fixed Assets (Land, Buildings, Installations and Fittings, Equipment and assets under Construction) and Intangible Fixed Assets.
The expenditure for each board area includes the capital expenditure of NHS divisions within that board area.
Cash Terms - A measure of the value of money without adjusting for the effect of inflation.
Catering Costs per Patient Consumer Week - the patient consumer week is used as the unit of cost for catering. It is calculated by adding together the number of inpatient days and 0.5 times the number of day patient attendances, then subtracting the number of patients on pass days and the number of patient days in special care baby units. The result is divided by 7.
Cleaning Costs per Square Metre - cleaning costs are compared on the basis of floor area measured in square metres. The area is calculated by summing the floor areas of each room and corridor within a building excluding areas not under the control of the domestic services manager, e.g. Laundries, main kitchen, boiler house.
Hospital Running Costs - the total revenue expenditure (pay, supplies and services) for a hospital, incurred in providing a service to patients.
Income ACT - funding in respect of Additional Cost of Teaching (ACT) is deducted from the expenditure of teaching hospitals in order to facilitate more meaningful comparisons with similar sized non-teaching hospitals.
Income Other - funding in respect of provisions of healthcare for non NHS patients or other services is deducted from expenditure in order to reflect only the costs of NHS healthcare.
Property Costs per Square Metre - property costs (including building, engineering and grounds maintenance) are compared on the basis of area. The measurement is Gross Internal Area (GIA) in square metres. It includes staff residences and excludes staff accommodation occupied under service tenancies.
Real Terms - A measure of the value of money that removes the effect of inflation.
Resource Transfer - Transfer of monies from NHS to fund health care provided by local authorities such as community based care packages and the support infra-structure for patients discharged from long stay hospitals.
Scottish Financial Returns (SFRs) - A series of templates used for standardising the return of the Costs Book data.
Specialty Allocated Costs - allocated costs comprises of the following:
- Administration
- Catering
- Uniforms
- Laundry
- Portering
- Waste Disposal
- Transport and Travel
- Property maintenance
- Cleaning
- Utilities
- Rent and Rates
- Furniture and other equipment purchase, rental and repairs
- Depreciation
- Notional interest
- Miscellaneous
Specialty Direct Costs - direct costs comprises of the following:
- Medical and dental staff
- Nursing staff
- Pharmacy staff and direct supplies
- AHP staff directly involved in patient care and direct supplies
- Other direct care staff and supplies
- Theatre staff and theatre supplies
- Laboratory costs
