Calculating the Cost of the Care Cycle for each Patient Undergoing Tonsillectomy Using Time- Driven Activity-Based Costing Method

With the increasing prevalence of tonsillectomy surgery and its high costs, the need to use a method that can reduce costs by calculating the cost of services more accurately is felt more than ever. The aim of the present study was to calculate the cost of the care cycle for each patient undergoing tonsillectomy using Time- Driven Activity-Based Costing Method. 

The present study is descriptive. The statistical population consisted of all patients with tonsillectomy who referred to Shahid Sadoughi Hospital in Yazd in 2017, whose total population was estimated at 206 people. To collect data from demographic information (including age, gender), medical information (including type of insurance, length of stay, disease complications, number of discharges and number of deaths), operational information (including types of clinical and Para clinical services, and The number of patients), the hospital information technology system and the semi-structured interviews with the medical staff and financial information from the hospital financial balance were used. Excel. version 2017 was used for data analysis. 

The cost of the care cycle for each patient undergoing tonsillectomy was equal to 2,922,559 Rials, of which 23.95% was allocated to the preoperative stage, 45.28% to the intraoperative stage and 30.77% to the postoperative stage. Price factors in the care cycle include staff salaries (36.60%), medical supplies (33.11%), medicine (25.96%), equipment (3.13%) and indirect costs (1.20%). The care cycle time of each patient was estimated to be 410 minutes and the waiting time between activities to be 60 minutes. 

The use of Time- Driven Activity-Based Costing Method led to the most accurate calculation of the cost of the care cycle of each patient undergoing tonsillectomy. It is suggested that policymakers and hospital managers use this information to better understand the cost components of the tonsillectomy care cycle in order to reduce the cost and time of patient treatment.