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Table 2 List and definition of variables considered for each of the models

From: Estimating the Unit Costs of Healthcare Service Delivery in India: Addressing Information Gaps for Price Setting and Health Technology Assessment

Category Variable Definition Source
Cost Unit cost Total cost of inpatient services divided by number of hospitalisations; total cost of outpatient services divided by number of outpatient visits. All costs are presented in 2015–2016 INR Cost dataset
Total costs Total costs are defined as the hotel costs and include human resources, equipment, building space, furniture and overheads. Treatment-specific costs of drugs, consumables, laboratory investigations are excluded Cost dataset
Labour Number of doctors Number of medical doctors working at the health facility (full or part-time) Cost dataset
Number of technical staff Combined number of nurses, pharmacists and other technical staff Cost dataset
Number of other staff Combined number of non medical staff Cost dataset
Capital Number of beds Number of inpatient beds at the health facilitya,b Cost dataset
Prices Mean salary of doctors at facility Mean wage of doctors working at the health facility Cost dataset
Mean salary of technical staff Mean wage of technical staff (as defined above) Cost dataset
Mean salary of other staff Mean wage of other staff (as defined above) Cost dataset
Output Hospitalisations per year Number of inpatient admissions in 1 year for the facility Cost dataset
Annual outpatient consultations Number of individual outpatient visits to the facility in 1 year Cost dataset
Other characteristics Dummy for health facility level Health facility level as defined by the state in which the facility is located: DH, CHC and PHC Cost dataset
State health index Baseline ranking of health sector incorporating aspects of health outcomes, governance and health sector inputs. A standardised measure available for all statesc [41]
Aspirational District Index Baseline ranking of districts according to a composite index of socio-economic, health and educator sector and infrastructure measures [42]
Capacity utilisation Service outputs were adjusted for capacity utilisation using the following formulae:
DH and CHC levels: bed occupancy rate = (number of patients × ALOS)/(number of beds × number of days)d
PHC: number of outpatient consultations/number of medical officers at the facility 		Calculation based on cost data set
State healthcare expenditure per capita Public expenditure on health per capita at the state level [43]
  1. ALOS average length of stay, DH district hospital, CHC community healthcare centre, INR Indian Rupees, PHC primary healthcare centre
  2. aNumber of beds is a good reflection of the working capital of a facility. In addition, the variable is an easier variable to obtain for anyone wishing to use the model for further estimations
  3. b14 PHCs did not report data on number of beds. As this was being used as a proxy for capital and because of the need to take logs, we assumed this value to be 1 where actual beds = 0
  4. cTo reflect the demand side, an additional variable capturing condition-specific data at the state or facility level would have been preferable, but standardised, reliable and good-quality data of this type are difficult to obtain for potential users of the model
  5. dFor one CHC, no routine inpatient admission happened in the reference year, so capacity utilisation for the inpatient model could not be calculated and this CHC was excluded from the analysis
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