A national list of provincial costs for health care: Canada 1997/8
Cite
as: Jacobs, P., Bachynsky, J., Hall,
E.
A Manual of Standard Costs for Pharmaco-Economic Studies in Canada: Feasibility
Study. Ottawa: Canadian Coordinating
Office for Health Technology Assessment (CCOHTA);
1995.
The purpose of this project is to determine whether a manual of standard costs for pharmaco-economic studies is desirable and feasible. In order to answer the question of desirability we have conducted a survey of users of economic evaluation studies and a review of the Canadian literature on economic evaluation studies in health care from 1980 to 1995 and an evaluation of these studies. The consumer survey was conducted to determine what degree of precision the users wanted in the manual. The literature review was undertaken with the object of determining if current costing methods yield valid measures of cost. Our conclusions from these endeavors was that a uniform system of costing was possible and worth considering.
However, the desirability of a more standard system of determining costs rests with the comparison of existing and potential methods of costing. That is, even if the current costing methods do not yield wholly valid results, it may be very expensive and time-consuming to obtain standard costs which are valid approximations of the value of resources used. We have undertaken the feasibility portion of our study in two parts. First, we conducted a provincial service list and set of standard costs for Alberta only. This was done because of the cost and availability of data. Once we completed this list, we had a "standard" against which we could compare the data available from other provinces.
We conducted a survey of the other eleven provinces and territories to determine what data was available, and to what degree standardization existed. Our conclusions were that substantial but partially complete service log and corresponding standard costs could be developed. Complete standardization is not feasible at this time.
The development of a national standard cost list will not be completed in one attempt. We see it as an evolving process that will have to be maintained continually by CCOHTA. It will have to be regularly updated and expanded (since initially, all the data elements will not be available.) It is our hope that this report clarifies the issues involved in moving towards a manual of standard cost.