Fixed costs
Electricity and water
The hospital’s expenditure on electricity and water
was calculated as per the number of electric sockets and
water taps present in the RICU.
Staff salaries
The numerous staff working in the ICU includes doctors,
nurses, and other supporting staffs. Per dime costs to the
institute for each of these categories was calculated taking
the median of their salary scales in relation to the estimated
proportion of their time devoted to the ICU.
These fixed costs was taken as a whole and then
calculated as fixed costs per bed per day.
Variable costs
Drugs, fluids, and disposables
The price at which the hospital purchases these things
was taken as the hospital costs.
Costs of equipment
Equipment costs were calculated by adding the purchase
price of the equipment with its Annual Comprehensive
Maintenance Contract (ACMC) charges. The average life
span of the equipment was taken as installation + 2 years
of warranty + 5 years of ACMC giving a total of 7 years.
From these data, the costs of each equipment per day is
calculated by, CPD = (PP + ACMC)/(7 × 365). Where;
CPD is cost per day, PP is purchase price, and ACMC
is the total ACMC costs for 7 years. The usage of these
equipments was calculated on a day to day basis.
Patient costs
A nominal amount is collected from patients towards
hospital charges, that is, INR 385 per day in RICU for
bed, routine investigations, and diet. A limited amount of
drugs and consumables are provided by the hospital. Rest
is purchased by the patient. The copies of prescriptions
given to the patient were collected every day.
Since this was a central government funded autonomous
tertiary care center, these charges are subsidized and
fixed arbitrarily without any intention of profit or
recovery of running cost.
Actual expense of the hospital on patient, that is, total
cost of care in RICU:
Fixed cost (infrastructure costs + salaries of the
staff + hospital costs) = A
Total variable cost (patient cost) = B
The difference in these two will determine the degree
to which the cost is subsidized, that is:
(A + B) ‑ (B)/(A + B) × 100.