The economic costs of orthopaedic services: a health system cost analysis of tertiary hospitals in a low-income country

Table 2 Summary of cost components and assumption for the micro-costing

Cost Component	Costing Methods	Assumptions for the intensity of need	Missing data protocol	Precedence
Medicines	Mean prescribed medication based on patient records	The proportion of patients prescribed medication	Records with missing prescription doses are excluded from consideration	[30, 31]
	The cost is calculated per item based on pack size		The items missing the pack size used the most commonly available or efficient pack size
	Total cost = cost per item dose frequency per day * Duration
Consumables	Average usage per person	Volume based on expert opinion	NA^b	[31]
Personnel	Task-specific cost – cost per minute * task duration	Task duration – expert opinion	NA	[31, 38, 39]
Personnel	Inpatient costs – daily personnel cost per ward/ average # of inpatients per day	Adjusted FTEs^c
Diagnostic Tests / Blood Transfusion	Based on average utilisation for specific diagnoses and expert opinion	The proportion of patients utilising service and expert opinion	NA
Medical Equipment	Calculated cost per use	Orthopaedic-specific use/utilisation	NA	[29, 31, 33, 37]
Overheads	Department apportioned overhead costs from top-down costing	1-bed day: 3 outpatient visits	NA	[31, 34, 40]

ISSN: 2191-1991