
Medical Services for a Provincial
Hospital in Vietnam: Cost Analysis
for Data Management
LC33-LC37
Correspondence
Trung Quang Vo.
Lecturer, Department of Pharmacy Administration, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City,
Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Vietnam.
E-mail : voquangtrungdk@gmail.com
Introduction: Health care expenditure has been increasing in both developing and developed nations, but control or improved efficiency can be obtained by applying health economics in management. The unit cost of health care services play a critical role in health economic analyses that involve health economic evaluations.
Aim: To identify the unit costs of medical services at the General Hospital in Lam Dong, Vietnam.
Materials and Methods: A standard costing approach was applied to calculate unit cost of medical services. This study was a retrospective cost analysis, using the descriptive statistic function in Microsoft Excel for Window®. All cost centres in the institute were identified and classified into two categories: Temporary Cost Centres (TCCs) and Absorbing Cost Centres (ACCs). The unit cost of each medical service was estimated by a cost-to-charge ratio method.
Results: The total costs of the Lam Dong General Hospital in the fiscal year 2015 were 4,560,891 USD. The contributions of capital costs, material costs and labour costs for all cost centres to the total direct cost were 16.36%, 49.07% and 34.57%, respectively. After allocation, the direct and indirect costs of all ACCs were 3,590,168 USD and 970,723 USD, accounting for 78.72% and 21.28%, respectively. The cost-to-charge ratios of the remaining medical services ranged from 0.36 to 164.68.
Conclusion: The results of this study can help hospital administrators understand their cost structures and run their facilities more efficiently. The study also provides unit costs for government data and aids in completing the Vietnam standard cost list. This will be helpful for health economic evaluations.