Health care expenditure quantifies the economic resources dedicated to health functions, excluding capital investment. Health care expenditure covers health care goods and services that are consumed by resident units, irrespective of where that consumption takes place (it may be in the rest of the world) or who is paying for it. As such, exports of health care goods and services (to non-resident units) are excluded, whereas imports of health care goods and services for final use are included.

Health care expenditure data provide information on expenditure broken down by function category (e.g. services of curative care, rehabilitative care, clinical laboratory, patient transport, prescribed medicines), provider category (e.g. hospitals, general practitioners) and financing scheme (e.g. social security, private insurance company, household). These categories form the 3 core classifications of the System of Health Accounts.

The complementary classification for the revenues broken down by health care financing schemes is also disseminated by Eurostat.