Gestão de custos ambientais em hospitais privados brasileiros

Abstract

The goal of the study is to analyse the procedures used in the management of environmental costs by private Brazilian hospitals. To do so, a survey was made up of assertions with five-point Likert scales, whose questionnaire was sent to the accountants and the managers of the environmental area of each entity. The data were collected from October 4th, 2017 to October 27th, 2017. The final sample was composed of 101 private hospital entities based in all regions of Brazil. The data of the research were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics, as well as hypotheses from the literature tested by the Mann-Whitney model, by the Spearman coefficient and multiple linear regression model. The results indicate that, in general, in hospitals there is a little use of accounting and of environmental cost management practices. Accountants also show little knowledge in environmental accounting. In addition, in the hospitals surveyed the management of environmental costs is not treated in a strategic way, only comply with what the legislation requires. It was not possible to identify relationship between the environmental cost control and the economic performance of hospitals, as well as the relationship between economic and environmental performance was not identified. It has been statistically verified that the larger hospitals are those that present larger investments in environmental issues and greater control of environmental costs. The research findings point to a theme that has not yet been explored by the literature and that is incipient in the reality of Brazilian private hospitals, which reinforces the idea that new studies with this approach are necessary.