Unit Cost of Medical Rehabilitation Services at Udon Thani Hospital

Abstract

Rehabilitation medicine is important and necessary as much as curative medicine. Delivering rehabilitation services for outpatient under the health insurance system in Thailand, providers were reimbursed by fee-for-service with price schedules. Currently, there are no data regarding specific cost of medical rehabilitation. This research was aimed at determining the unit cost of medical rehabilitation.

A retrospective descriptive study was conducted at Udon Thani Hospital, a 809-bed, government- run, regional hospital in the North-east of Thailand from a provider perspective. The unit cost was calculated by a standard method and the cost of each medical rehabilitation activities were calculated by micro-costing method. The study showed that the direct cost of rehabilitation medicine department (excluding rehabilitation ward) comprised labour cost (51.93%), material cost (32.33%) and capital cost (15.74%). The indirect cost was 21.76 percent of the total cost. The gross unit cost of outpatient service (excluding drug and medical material cost) was 331 baht/visit. For rehabilitation ward, the labour cost, material cost and capital cost were 80.64, 11.24 and 8.12 percent, respectively. The indirect cost was 26.80 percent of total cost. The average cost was 15,763.93 baht/person or 1,635.23 baht/day.

The results can assist the hospital administrators to set the hospital charges related to their cost.The policy makers can use these data to reconsider price schedule for reimbursement.