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    A time study of physicians' work in a German university eye hospital to estimate unit costs. 
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    A time study of physicians' work in a German university eye hospital to estimate unit costs.

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    Published Version (134.4Kb)
    Volume
    10
    Pagination
    e0121910 - ?
    DOI
    10.1371/journal.pone.0121910
    Journal
    PLoS One
    Issue
    3
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    BACKGROUND: Technical efficiency of hospital services is debated since performance has been heterogeneous. Staff time represents the main resource in patient care and its inappropriate allocation has been identified as a key factor of inefficiency. The aim of this study was to analyse the utilisation of physicians' work time stratified by staff groups, tasks and places of work. A further aim was to use these data to estimate resource use per unit of output. METHODS: A self-reporting work-sampling study was carried during 14-days at a University Eye Hospital. Staff costs of physicians per unit of output were calculated at the wards, the operating rooms and the outpatient unit. RESULTS: Forty per cent of total work time was spent in contact with the patient. Thirty per cent was spent with documentation tasks. Time spent with documentation tasks declined monotonically with increasing seniority of staff. Unit costs were 56 € per patient day at the wards, 77 € and 20 € per intervention at the operating rooms for inpatients and outpatients, respectively, and 33 € per contact at the outpatient unit. Substantial differences in resources directly dedicated to the patient were found between these locations. CONCLUSION: The presented data provide unprecedented units costs in inpatient Ophthalmology. Future research should focus on analysing factors that influence differences in time allocation, such as types of patients, organisation of care processes and composition of staff.
    Authors
    Wolff, J; McCrone, P; Patel, A; Auber, G; Reinhard, T
    URI
    http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/9518
    Collections
    • Applied Economics [100]
    Language
    eng
    Licence information
    This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
    Copyright statements
    Copyright: © 2015 Wolff et al.
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