Estimating the unit costs of public hospitals and primary healthcare centers

Abstract

The findings have implications for policy and decision making in the health sector in Palestine concerning the cost of services provided by hospitals and PHCs. The availability of a standardized data set for cost assessment would greatly enhance and improve the quality of financial information as well as efficiency in the use of scarce resources.

Costs of hospital services in Jordan

“…This is the first study that estimated the operating costs and unit costs of hospital services in a big public urban hospital in Jordan. In line with findings from the previous two hospital autonomy reports from Jordan in 2002 (As‐Sayaideh et al , ; Banks et al , ) and reports from a number of developing countries (Vander Plaetse et al , ; Saksena et al , ; Chatterjee et al , ; Younis et al , ),we found that 50% and 17% of the hospital expenditures were consumed by inpatient and outpatient care centres respectively.…”

“…Allocation rules were based on the American Hospital Association recommendations; these were also adapted from similar studies (Roberts et al, 1999;As-Sayaideh et al, 2002;Banks et al, 2002;Conteh and Walker, 2004;Saksena et al, 2010;Chatterjee et al, 2013;Younis et al, 2013).…”

“…A number of studies are available to estimate unit costs at the level of different providers, care areas and organization matrixes. (Vander Plaetse et al, 2005;Saksena et al, 2010;Chatterjee et al, 2013;Younis et al, 2013). Inpatient hospital days, outpatient visits and day care treatments were highlighted widely to be important cost drivers in economic evaluations.…”

“…Inpatient hospital days, outpatient visits and day care treatments were highlighted widely to be important cost drivers in economic evaluations. Information on hospital unit costs is valuable to health decision-makers and researchers to inform resources allocation and assess comparative efficiency of healthcare services (Vander Plaetse et al, 2005;Saksena et al, 2010;Chatterjee et al, 2013;Younis et al, 2013). However, the process of cost calculation in hospitals was not free of challenges (Mogyorosy and Smith, 2005;Riewpaiboon et al, 2007).…”

An empirical analysis of Unit costs of public hospitals in Jordan

“…Unit costs were defined as the cost of one unit of "output" including admission, inpatient days, outpatient visits, emergency visits and surgical operations (12,18,19). Unit costs per hospital output were estimated using standard average costing; top down approach (17,18,(20)(21)(22). Total health expenditures of a provider was divided by the total output produced to determine the unit costs above.…”