A Comparative Analysis of Primary Care Costs of Sub-District Health Promoting Hospitals of Local Governments and of Ministry of Public Health
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Abstract
This study aimed to compare the service unit costs of sub-district health promoting hospitals between the transferred and non-transferred hospitals and employed purposive sampling to select two specific provinces, namely Chiang Rai and Lampang. This study used a standard unit cost analysis method, collecting retrospective data on labor, material, and capital (equipment) costs from October 2021 to September 2022, through interviewing practitioners and reviewing data recorded in the sub-district health promoting hospitals. The findings indicated that the transferred sub-district health promoting hospitals had lower unit costs. The decrease was partly attributed to a significant reduction in number of health personnel working in the recently transferred units. Therefore, the allocation of personnel was a critical issue to consider before embarking on the decentralization process. Furthermore, the present study had limitations of studying early period of transfer, during the period of COVID-19 pandemic, and adopting services data from previous studies.
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