Materials and Methods
To apply the proposed model, activities in Faghihi
Hospital were observed by a team of system -
designers during a 12 -month period and relevant
data were collected in different parts of the hospital.
Then, ABC system was designed based on the
financial information of the hospital in 2009. Following
steps were taken to design and to apply the
proposed method:
Step 1: Separating the hospital based on services
In this stage, the hospital was divided into three
parts based on the offered services to patients as:
Operational divisions: These divisions offer services
to hospitalized patients, such as recovery,
operating room, heart surgery, and emergency
units.
Diagnostic divisions: They offer diagnostic services
to hospitalized patients as laboratory, radiology,
etc.
Administrative and Service divisions: These
units prepare facilities and offer services to all
hospital units, such as accounting, management,
and administrative units.
Step 2: Defining and analyzing activity centers
In this stage, necessary activities in providing services
to patients were identified. As an example,
activities related to services in surgery department
(unit level and batch level activities) are displayed
in Fig. 1. A surgery operation consists of some
activities requiring numerous sources involving
some costs. Only the unit level and batch level
have been indicated in the above figure and activities
of sustaining level and hospital level are not
included.