Costing anaesthetic practice: reconciling perspectives and approaches

Summary

In a previously published article by Broadway and Jones, the anaesthesia-related cost of a hernia repair operation was estimated to be £74.40, of which 21% was accounted for by anaesthetic agents and adjunct drugs. This result contrasts with our estimate of the total procedure cost for an inpatient hernia repair operation of £1,037.39, of which anaesthetic agents and adjunct drugs comprised less than 1%. In order to explain this difference, in this paper we compare and contrast our methodology for and perspective on costing resource use in anaesthesia with those used by Broadway et al. We conclude that these two apparently divergent results, once reconciled in terms of cost coverage and perspectives taken, are broadly equivalent (a reconciled cost of £78.21 compared with the £74.40 of Broadway and Jones.), and that the cost of anaesthetic agents and adjunct drugs constitute a small proportion of total procedure costs.