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Activity-Based Costing and Activity-Based Management for Health Care

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Activity-Based Costing and Activity-Based Management for Health Care by Baker

The editor and contributing authors are well qualified with rich backgrounds in finance and management. This book has 24 chapters that are both theoretical and practical. The first three chapters introduce activity-based costing and management and discuss how they work in health care. The benefits of activity based costing versus volume-based costing are identified as: "(1) more accurate costs of services delivered, (2) better discrimination between profitable and unprofitable services and service lines, (3) improved pricing and contracting strategies, (4) improved management decision-making capability, (5) greater ease of determining relevant costs, and (6) reduced nonvalue-added costs. (p. 27) The book gives a detailed step by step procedure for doing a time study. The importance of structural choices such as direct costs to be traced and indirect costs to be allocated is stressed for determining the organization's costing framework. Because ABC provides a mix-and-match menu of costs and their financial and operational interrelationships, it is important for management to determine that the ABM reporting depicts what the organization wants to measure and manage. The book relates quality measures, budgeting, standard setting, benchmarking , Pareto analysis, and clinical pathways to activity-based costing and management. Content is illustrated through case studies about family physicians, primecare, hospitals, home health agencies, skilled nursing facilities, and a school-based health center. The final chapter is about the future for ABC/ABM in health care. There is a glossary and index. This book is appropriate for graduate students interested in financial and strategic management of health care organizations