Costs of ICPs were retrospectively collected in five public academic hospitals that are considered national centres of excellence (A, B, C, D, and E), located in four states of Brazil. Participating centres were selected based on their expertise in health technology assessment projects, on whether they were members of the Brazilian Network for Health Technology Assessment (REBRATS), and on their technical capabilities in terms of human resources. Additionally, hospital characteristics are listed in Table 1. The study perspective was that of the public health system. This study was approved by the Ethics Committees of the participating hospitals.
DATA COLLECTION
Between March and October 2018, all patients submitted to an ICP were added to the sample analysis, which was limited to a maximum of 20 patients per centre. Center E was the only one that did not reach the maximum (total of 10 patients). Patients were eligible if they had an elective ICP during this period and had a hospital account reimbursed by the unified health system. All centres followed the same data collection process and received instructions on data collection, and a database was created on REDCap web-based software (Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA)16.
A multidisciplinary team composed of physicians, industrial engineers and professionals with business backgrounds was formed to apply the TDABC method. All suggested operationalisation steps of the method were strictly followed, starting with the design of the entire patient care pathway and finishing with cost analyses oriented to identify opportunities to decrease costs 14 17. Applying this microanalytic approach, it is possible to measure the costs of all the resources used to treat a patient’s medical condition over a complete cycle of care.
Process maps were developed by direct observation of a selected centre over a one-week period, followed by validation by the remaining participating centres. The resulting validated map was used to identify all resources consumed during the care pathway (Figure 1). Pre-procedure, procedure, and post-procedure macrophases were observed as described in previous studies 18 19 15. At the pre-procedure phase, the patient is admitted and prepared for the procedure at the haemodynamic unit; the procedure phase is substantially performed by physicians with the support of nurses and nurse technicians at the haemodynamic unit; and the post-procedure phases include the period of patient stabilisation after ICP in the haemodynamic unit before transfer to another unit.
Different variables were selected for evaluation personnel, corporate and divisional allocations (hospital structure), and medications and materials related to each macrophase of the procedure. Data collection techniques included medical record review, direct process observations by researchers, and interviews with hospital staff 20. In each hospital, the local researchers followed each individual patient to report the time spent per patient in each phase. These information data were used to calculate the individual costs per phase. The prices and amounts of materials, prostheses and medications were collected from invoices and documents containing the mean acquisition costs of supplies. These prices did not include profit margins, given the public nature of the participating centres.
Non-labour costs included hospital structure fixed costs, such as energy, depreciation, third-party contracts, software licences, taxes and general materials, which were attributed to the haemodynamic unit from each hospital. Labour costs included salaries and were charged per professional class. Financial data were based on a mean expenditure incurred per month over a 12-month period and were obtained from the financial departments of each hospital.
To estimate the cost-capacity rate (CCR) for each resource, the actual capacity was calculated, taking into consideration the number of rooms and working load period of the haemodynamic unit for non-labour costs. For the labour costs, monthly work hours and expected fringe benefit rate were considered.
DATA ANALYSIS
Sample data were consolidated in a Microsoft® Excel spreadsheet for Mac 2019 and exported to IBM SPSS® for Mac 2019 for analysis. Time and cost databases were created for each resource under analysis. Patient-level cost mean, standard deviation (SD), minimum, and maximum values per site were reported descriptively. Next, a comparison between the mean time and cost per phase allowed the identification of connections between time and cost during the procedure. The TDABC equation, which suggests the sum product of the CCR of each resource and the time consumed of each resource, was applied considering the labour and non-labour variables, stratified per phase, and allowed us to calculate the mean cost per procedure phase, resource and hospital.
The analysis of costs per phase is an advantage of the TDABC method, and it has been used to prioritise improvement actions 21. The CCR of each recourse observed in the sample of hospitals and the resource time consumption differences were used to explain the variation identified in costs and time in each treatment phase among hospitals.
The analyses aimed to identify cost-saving opportunities in each hospital care process. Because of inter-state differences in supply acquisition, which pose analytic challenges, prices of prostheses, materials and medications were excluded from the analysis 4. The cost composition measured by the mean cost of each resource variable stratified by labour and non-labour costs in each phase was analysed for the cost-saving estimates. A graphical analysis comparing the costliest hospital in ICP to the least costly hospital allowed us to identify the resource variables that contribute the most to the cost difference and, because of that, concentrate the highest cost-saving opportunity.
Cost data were collected in Brazilian currency (Reais, in 2019) and converted into international dollars ($) according to the purchasing power parity (PPP) data for 2018 from Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.