Project objectives
HPA has undertaken activity based costing meeting the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority’s (IHPA’s) requirements for Private Sector National Hospital Cost Data Collection (NHCDC) for various private hospital groups.
Various clients
Our approach
The process has generally involved initially working with the client to identify and obtain the necessary activity data and financial data, including measures to allocate costs.
The next stage involves the actual costing. For this, HPA has developed its own costing method, following the Australian Patient Costing Standards, which we have used across several projects.
We also typically develop visualisations of the data, to allow key people in the organisation to view the results and identify any potential problems.
Finally, we prepare the data in the format required for the NHCDC and submit this and respond to any queries.
With each costing exercise we identify opportunities for improvement, such as where better statistics could be used for allocating indirect costs.
Outcome
The costing that we have undertaken has allowed our clients to better understand their costs and use this information to identify areas for improvement, including investment and disinvestment, as well as allowing them to participate in the NHCDC. We have also identified and implemented improvements to data to improve the quality of the costing.
