ABSTRACT:
The upward escalation of the morbidity rate in India has led to an increased demand for hospital services. At the same time, the hospital management rises the health care cost substantially in India to harvest at the right time. Similarly, the hospitals doubled the patient care charges, as the admission in the hospitals become a nightmare for the people. Here, the paper attempts to understand the difference between the actual cost spent by the hospital and a bill produced to a patient for a normal vaginal delivery through cost accounting model. With a combined prospective and retrospective approach, the author has done cost accounting for a normal vaginal delivery using a fixed-unfixed cost accounting framework. Using the convenience sampling technique, 30 records were audited and 8 normal deliveries were observed. The tool was developed by the investigator, which consists of the demographic data and observation checklist of consumables including drugs, equipment, furniture, and fittings. The maternal records were audited retrospectively to find out the average number of drugs and related consumables used per patient. The concept of this cost accounting is to estimate the cost of services to patients directly and indirectly, which helps in making decisions regarding financial statements and estimate the profit/ loss of the organization. Hopefully, a study of the existing system process in the hospital can lead to the effective logical planning process for the management in the future.