A Method to Create Resource Consumption Profiles for Biomedical Equipment

摘要

Much of the raise in the healthcare sector's expenditures in the last few decades has been pointed out as result of the increasing use of medical equipment, but little is actually known about the contribution of hardware and software to the cost of providing health care. This study presents a method to create resource consumption profiles within medical procedures. Based on Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TDABC), the method focuses on the medical procedure to evaluate the way medical equipment consumes resources in the process of delivering health care. The mapping of the resource consumption structure is gradually done, from medical procedure activities to resources. Because the focus is on the biomedical equipment (BME), the method ignores human resources and considers only the ones directly related to the equipment (such as maintenance, accessories and disposables). The results showed that the resource consumption of equipment in a medical procedure depends on each specific procedure and on the hospital's specific practices.