Average unit price of items,
which were not available in the rate contract list of this tertiary
care hospital, were obtained from a survey of three medical and
surgical distributors, which had the greatest volume of sales in the
city. The cost of hospitalized treatment was assumed to be 10 (8–
15) times the OPD care. This assumption was based on the
estimates of cost of outpatient consultation and inpatient treatment
for South East Asian countries, produced by the WHO-CHOICE
study [24]. For preventive services, we used a cost of INR 300 per
capita per year which was estimated by the National Commission
on Macroeconomics and Health report for India [25].