Cost of radiology services using the activity based costing (ABC) method

Objective (s): The objective of this study was to calculating the costs of radiology in four teaching hospitals affiliated to Ardebil University of Medical Sciences، Ardebil، Iran.

This was a cross- sectional study for calculating the costs of radiology services by using activity based costing technique in radiology departments of four selected hospitals. The Data were extracted from existing documents in hospital to calculate total cost of the radiology services.

The direct costs including the cost of films and personnel were the major cost of radiology services. When the mean cost for two preceding years were studied، the average unit costs were 102737، 96422، 90968 and 8914 Rials in Imam Khomeini، Alavi، Dr. Fatemi and Bou-Ali hospitals at first year and 112530، 10820، 107242 and 10325 in second years.

It seems that unnecessary referrals and financial administration of hospitals in terms of planning and allocating of resources led to increasing average radiology services costs.