Consider again the example of patient registration. Now,
assume that the time required to register a known patient
is estimated to be 2 min. If a patient, however, is new,
the department head estimates, either from experience or
making several observations, that an additional 2 min will
be required to register the patient. The time equation for
this small example is given as:
Patient registration time per patient = 2 + 2if unknown patient
Once a TDABC system is in place, department heads and
healthcare managers can review the cost of the unused
capacity and contemplate actions to determine whether
and how to reduce costs of supplying unused resources in
subsequent periods: they can then monitor those actions
over time. Managers can also easily update their TDABC
models to reflect changes in operating conditions. To add
more activities for a department, they do not have to reinterview
personnel; they can simply estimate the unit
time required for each newactivity [16,20]. In the following
section, we further illustrate the estimation procedure and
managerial impact of a TDABC model in a Belgian outpatient
clinic.