What Is the Inpatient Cost of Hip Replacement? A Time-Driven Activity Based Costing Pilot Study in an Italian Public Hospital

The emphasis on value-based payment models for primary total hip replacement (THA) results in a greater need for orthopaedic surgeons and hospitals to better understand actual costs and resource use. Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TDABC) is an innovative approach to measure expenses more accurately and address cost challenges. It estimates the quantity of time and the cost per unit of time of each resource (e.g., equipment and personnel) used across an episode of care. Our goal is to understand the true cost of a THA using the TDABC in an Italian public hospital and to comprehend how the adoption of this method might enhance the process of providing healthcare from an organizational and financial standpoint. During 2019, the main activities required for total hip replacement surgery, the operators involved, and the intraoperative consumables were identified. A process map was produced to identify the patient’s concrete path during hospitalization and the length of stay was also recorded. The total inpatient cost of THA, net of all indirect costs normally included in a DRG-based reimbursement, was about EUR 6000. The observation of a total of 90 patients identified 2 main expense items: the prosthetic device alone represents 50.4% of the total cost, followed by the hospitalization, which constitutes 41.5%. TDABC has proven to be a precise method for determining the cost of the healthcare delivery process for THA, considering facilities, equipment, and staff employed. The process map made it possible to identify waste and redundancies. Surgeons should be aware that the choice of prosthetic device and that a lack of pre-planning for discharge can exponentially alter the hospital expenditure for a patient undergoing primary THA.