Animated-simulation modeling facilitates clinical-process costing.
Traditionally, the finance department has assumed responsibility for assessing process costs in healthcare organizations. To enhance process-improvement efforts, however, many healthcare providers need to include clinical staff in process cost analysis. Although clinical staff often use electronic spreadsheets to model the cost of specific processes, PC-based animated-simulation tools offer two major advantages over spreadsheets: they allow clinicians to interact more easily with the costing model so that it more closely represents the process being modeled, and they represent cost output as a cost range rather than as a single cost estimate, thereby providing more useful information for decision making.
Zelman
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Department of Health Policy and Administration, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, School of Public Health, USA. wzelman@unc.edu
Glick
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Blackmore
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D000066:Accounting / Q000379:methods; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis / Q000379:methods; D005377:Financial Management, Hospital / Q000379:methods*; D017721:Hospital Costs / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000191:economics*; D008432:Mathematical Computing; D017059:Models, Econometric; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000191:economics*; D014481:United States