Hospital Costing Study in the Hospitals Under Ministry of Public Health, 2010-2011

Abstract

This objective of this study was to collect service cost data from the hospitals under Ministry of Public Health (MOPH) during the years 2010-2011. The cost was calculated by using the conventional method combining with applied microcosting method that used charge-cost ratio as the individual patient allocation factors. It was found 94 hospitals (11.19%) from the total of 840 MOPH hospitals showed their potential to calculate the service costing data. These included 81 (10.87%) of community hospitals, 9 (12.86%) of provincial hospitals and 4 (16.0%) of regional hospitals. The average out-patient unit cost was 474.01baht per visit in the community hospitals, 754.27 baht per visit in the provincial hospitals and 1,154.79 baht per visit in the regional hospitals. The average in-patient unit cost was 9,416.09 baht per adjRW in the community hospitals, 12,605.20 baht per adjRW in the provincial hospitals and 10,120.71 baht per adjRW in the regional hospitals. The proportion of the unit cost between out-patient and in-patient was 1:14.54 visit per case (1: 21.46 visit per adjRW) in the community hospitals and 1:19.70 visit per case (1:15.99 visit per adjRW) in the Provincial and Regional hospitals. There is a need to improve this methodological approach to improve the quality of the costing data. Future scaling-up of the approach to other hospitals is also recommended.