Identifying Costs of Medical Care
An Essential Step in Allocating Resources
- Rex B. Conn, MD;
- Raymond D. Aller, MD;
- George D. Lundberg, MD
- From the Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta (Dr Conn); Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, Santa Barbara, Calif, and the University of Southern California, Los Angeles (Dr Aller); and the American Medical Association, Chicago (Dr Lundberg). Dr Lundberg was Chair and Drs Aller and Conn are members of the Workload Recording Committee of the College of American Pathologists.
Abstract
Financial constraints are imposing an urgent requirement on American medicine to control the increasing costs of medical care. Valid data on "true" costs are required to make optimum trade-offs between qualityavailability and cost of medical services; unfortunately, these data are generally lacking. Standard accounting procedures provide information on expenditures for items such as utilities, pharmaceuticals, and payroll; however, these procedures cannot identify personnel costs related to a specific medical service. The Laboratory Workload Recording Method developed by the College of American Pathologists offers a proved method for calculating personnel costs in performing each type of procedure in the clinical laboratory as well as projected costs of alternative management actions. Similar principles could be applied in other areas of health care.
(JAMA 1985;253:1586-1589)
Footnotes
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Reprint requests to Emory University Hospital, 1364 Clifton Rd NE, Atlanta, GA 30322 (Dr Conn).
