Abstract
The objective of this paper is to provide a
description and analysis of the main costing and pricing
(reimbursement) systems employed by hospitals in the
Spanish National Health System (NHS). Hospitals cost
calculations are mostly based on a full costing approach
as opposite to other systems like direct costing or
activity based costing. Regional and hospital differ-
ences arise on the method used to allocate indirect costs
to cost centres and also on the approach used to mea-
sure resource consumption. Costs are typically calcu-
lated by disaggregating expenditure and allocating it to
cost centres, and then to patients and DRGs. Regarding
public reimbursement systems, the impression is that
unit costs are ignored, except for certain type of high
technology processes and treatments