National health accounts: lessons from the U.S. experience

The national health accounts (NHA) are the framework within which type of services and sources of funding for health care expenditures are measured. NHA, devised to portray the structure of health care delivery and financing in the United States, provide essential information necessary for the formulation of public health policy and for international comparison. In this article, the authors describe the importance of the NHA nationally and internationally, and provide a blueprint of the definitions, sources, and methods used to create this system of NHA in the United States.