The development of a method for comparative costing of individual intensive care units

Intensive care is one of the most costly areas of hospital care. Unfortunat ely, because of the diversify of case mix, costing intensive care is diffic ult. Many described costing methods previously are limited by being cumbers ome, laborious to apply and expensive. The aim of this study was to develop a method for costing intensive care which can be applied with ease but fac ilitate meaningful cost comparisons between intensive care units. The metho d developed was based on cost blocks where the major components were identi fied and costed in a 'top-down' manner, Using strict definitions, the cost blocks attempted to measure the costs of equipment, estates, nonclinical su pport services (such as hospital management costs), clinical support servic es (such as physiotherapy, laboratory services), consumables (such as drugs , fluids and disposables) and staff. The study found that clinical support services, consumables and staff costs accounted for approximately 85% of th e total costs.