Product-line performance reporting: a key to cost management.

For many hospitals, performance reporting is the most important and valuable function of a cost management system. Performance reporting provides hospitals--or any organization, for that matter--with an enhanced ability to reduce and control costs and monitor profitability. By periodically comparing strategic and operational plans with actual results, managers are provided with measurements of their performance for the aspects of the organization they control. The following is an excerpt from the book, Cost Management for Hospitals. This section deals with product-line performance reporting and the variances that measure the effects different factors have on performance.