Reiter, Song co-author new edition of textbook on financial management for health care organizations

July 1, 2020

Dr. Kristin Reiter

Dr. Paula Song

Professor Kristin Reiter, PhD, and Associate Professor Paula Song, PhD, of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, have collaborated on a new edition of a textbook on accounting and financial management for health care organizations.

The seventh edition of Gapenski’s Healthcare Finance: An Introduction to Accounting and Financial Management will be available beginning July 27 from the Health Administration Press.

Gapenski’s Healthcare Finance: An Introduction to Accounting and Financial Management

Gapenski’s Healthcare Finance has long been a bestseller in the teaching of introductory concepts for financial operations in health care organizations. This significantly updated text examines the current financial environment in which providers operate, with an emphasis on health system design, healthcare insurance and reimbursement methodologies. Content, including dates, examples, references and resources have been updated to reflect current accounting and reporting standards.

“In the environment faced by health care providers today, good financial decision-making is more important than ever to the economic well-being of the enterprise,” Reiter and Song state in the text. “Managers of all types and levels should be thoroughly grounded in finance principles and applications.”

The new edition also includes discussion of health reform, the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid expansion and health insurance exchanges, tax rates and examples that reflect the effects of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act. It addresses social determinants of health and implications of value-based payment for the revenue cycle. It also includes a new chapter supplement providing expanded analysis of the double-entry accounting system.

This text is the fourth in a series of recent publications from the Gillings School’s health policy and management faculty. Reiter and Song also co-authored the third edition Gapenski’s Fundamentals of Healthcare Finance in May 2018. In January 2018, Song and co-author George Pink, PhD, Humana Distinguished Professor of health policy and management, collaborated on the sixth edition of Gapenski’s Cases in Healthcare Finance. And in December 2019, Pink and Song co-authored the eighth edition of Gapenski’s Understanding Healthcare Financial Management.

Contact the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health communications team at sphcomm@unc.edu