This paper is motivated by a concern that the health care sector of the municipal bond market lacks adequate financial performance disclosures. This lack of sufficient disclosure has been blamed for the inability of some hospitals to raise much‐needed funding through bond issues and may also adversely affect interest costs. There have been frequent calls for both increased disclosure and increased regulation of such disclosure to protect the interests of investors and creditors within this market sector. However, such calls presume that financial accounting information—and therefore the regulation of accounting disclosures—is the policy arena of interest. We demonstrate that, even with respect to narrowly focused financial interests, nonfinancial sources of information are also relevant. This is suggestive of the notion that the economic features of health care may be such that nonfinancial aspects of health care delivery may be important to the financial performance of hospitals.

This content is only available via PDF.
You do not currently have access to this content.