The aim of this thesis is to investigate issues arising from the integration of accounting and medicine. The setting for this is medical audit. The area of medical audit is an interesting field for investigation. It provides a research setting which reflects the tensions and divergences between, on the one hand, the intentions and concerns of the medical profession and, on the other, the aims of the managerial and accounting reforms in health care, which the British government has implemented in the last two decades. The intention is to investigate whether medical audit can be considered as an appropriate area in which the interaction of management accounting methods and clinical practice may contribute to a closer collaboration among accountants and clinicians. Accounting has the potential to play an important though non traditional role in developing constructive financial information which places less emphasis on control and more on contributing to a cost effective clinical service design and treatment process. To achieve this, accountants have to appreciate clinical decision-making process procedures and objectives, so that appropriate information can be supplied, in the context form and at the correct time. This study uses the medical audit as the setting for assessing whether accounting information can contribute to improving both the quality of care and its cost effectiveness. The aim of this study is therefore to ascertain the extent of potential interest in accounting, particularly in cost accounting, by clinicians. This issue reveals a paradoxical element in clinicians’ behaviour, which requires explanation, Kilpatrick et al. discloses a scenario, which presents inconsistencies in the pattern of clinicians’ behaviour (Kilpatrick K., Lapsley I., Mitchell F., 1998).