Costs of a Hospital-Based, Ready-To-Use Syringe Delivery Programme
Objective: The risk of errors in the medication administration process is high. Applications of prefilled syringes may improve patient safety but could be more costly. The objective of this study was to assess the additional costs of a ready-to-use syringe delivery programme in comparison with a conventional delivery programme at day surgery and endoscopy departments at a large university hospital. Methods: The cost analysis used the hospital perspective and developed an “activity-based costing” model to assess the costs of medicinehandling activities. The model was calibrated with six-month data from a ready-to-use syringe delivery programme. Detailed measures of time and resource use related to the preparation process were obtained by direct observations. Registry-based data on activity, consumption and discards were obtained before and after the implementation to supplement the observed data. Local unit costs were converted to 2013-€ to estimate the incremental costs. Results: The analysis showed that the ready-to-use programme was more costly than the conventional delivery programme. The annual incremental cost for the day surgery department was estimated at €70,469 (an increase of 105%) and at €20,905 (an increase of 228%) for the endoscopy department. The ready-to-use delivery program imposed an additional cost of €11.32 per day surgery operation and €2.41 per endoscopy procedure. Conclusion: This ready-to-use programme increased the cost of the medical handling process. This incremental cost is likely to provide improvements in the quality of the administrative process, patient safety and staff satisfaction.
Risør BW, Vand S, Lisby M, Aagaard L and Sørensen J
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