Costing A Special Emergency Health Service Facility Design

A special emergency health service facility design is generally created in addition to the normal emergency service facility available in hospitals to cater to the specific needs arising out of the sudden emergency situation (for example, COVID-19, war, earthquake, flooding, etc.) to meet the specific needs of affected people. The main components of a health service facility design are in the form of space (land, building, and its internal layout), utilities (water, gas, electricity, etc.), machinery, fixtures (tables, chairs, beds, etc.), direct material supplies (medicines, and chemicals etc.), and staff(doctors, nurses, pharmacists etc.) to provide specific emergency services to the affected people. Studies reviewed related to cost estimation for admitted patients in emergency health service facilities indicate that cost estimation is generally based on direct medical and material supplies. The cost of other indirect resources used, such as special facility space, machinery and equipment used, and medical staffproviding emergency health services to patients (contributing a significant part of the total cost) is not included in cost estimation. In this paper, a generic costing methodology is proposed to help estimate the cost of indirect resources and then distributing the cost to each patient more accurately. This methodology could be useful to researchers, practitioners, entrepreneurs and policymakers in health services to assess the cost of indirect resources per patient for the purpose of accurate cost estimation for strategic as well as day to day decision making.