تحليل هزينه هاي توليد اطلاعات در سيستم مراقبت بهداشتي شهرستان البرز

Cost Analysis of Information Generation in Alborz Healthcare

Introduction: Information economics analysis is important issue for creation of appropriate intelligence about information mobility, evidence based ondecision making and b oosting of policy making process in system. Objective: To calculate the costs of information generation in Health Houses, Rural Health Centers and County Health Center of Alborz county health care system. Materials and Methods: This descriptive analytical study was conducted in 2008. The study population included Alborz county health center, 3 Rural Health Centers and 8 Health Houses. Data were collected through observation activities, checklists, costing forms and interviews. Activity Based Costing (ABC) method was used to analyze the costs. Results: The costs of human resources, special and general materials, energy and general costs, capitals deprecation and repairmen in proportion to total costs were 70%, 3%and 2%, 8% and 17%respectively.The proportion of information cost to total operational costs in Health Houses, Rural Health Centers and County Health Center were 45.8%, 24.7%and4.1% respectively. Average unit-cost of generated information in HHs, RHCs and CHCs were $0.76, S2.74 and $3.73 respectively. The total amount of generated information were 545180 units with total cost of $82000 .Information generation cost was 15.6%of total operational costs in the system. Conclusion: Regarding the cost of information generation in this healthcare system, the need for using and screening information for evidence-based on decision making is obvious. Hence, more efforts have to done by managers and policymakers in healthcare system for implementation of a standard HMIS and to train personnel in order to generate optimum information by minimum costs.