3. Cost of home nursing
The direct cost of home visits was estimated from the
perspective of Silver Chain (Table 1). The cost of a visit was
defined as the sum of the provider’s wage and travel costs.
Other costs such as overheads, accrual type items (e.g.
superannuation, fringe-benefit tax, building depreciation),
indirect care costs including referral, scheduling and case
management, and the opportunity costs of volunteers,
were not estimated due to their complexity. Therefore the
present costings are less than the true unit cost for this
service. The Silver Chain database contains details of the
time spent by the provider on the visit (including travel)
and in support meetings as a result of the visit