Australian governmental hospitals in 2010 showed
applying tariff method does not provide useful
information and leads to mislead decisions for
managers (9).
One of the other important results of this research
is the identification of the cost price difference in
occupancy bed day in intensive care units (ICU)
than in other departments. The main reason for
high costs in occupancy bed day is due to costs of
equipments deprecation, facilities, manpower
costs and low number of occupied bed day. For
example, the cost of each occupied bed day in the
“Heart ICU” is about $97.8, which has the negative
deviation of $48.2 in comparison to the enacted
tariff ($49.18). One of the reasons for the
negative deviation of costs in occupancy bed day
especially in intensive care units (ICU) is the low
number of occupied beds. For example, occupancy
bed day in the heart surgery ICU was 38.6%
during the observed period. Regarding the high
amount of costs, their full capacity has not been
used and the total fixed cost of these activity centers
is only allocated to occupancy bed day. Therefore,
the cost of every occupied bed day has increased
significantly.
In a study performed in some American hospitals, cost
price in ICU department had tangible difference to
other parts of the hospitals especially in specialized
hospitals compared with general hospitals. This difference
is meaningful (15). However, another study performed
in one of the Canadian hospitals showed the
occupancy bed day was very high. Thislead to low cost
price services in the hospital (16).
Determining the unused capacity of resources in various
departments of the hospital is another result of
this research. For example, in “sinuses photography”,
the standard time for presenting the output should be
equal to 432 hours but it was 2211 hours. So, the
available resources are not used completely. In other
words, about 1779 hours of resources (Manpower,
facilities and other equipments) are not utilized. A
Study in hospitals Health Care in Australia showed
that as suitable mechanisms for costing were not applied,
they were not able to detect unused capacities
and it lead to organizational cost to be increased (17)