Methodological Guide for calculating training costs in medical specialty residents, a pending task

Abstract

In the Dominican Republic, the actual cost of training medical residents is unknown, hence, calculating it is a pending task for educational institutions and professional societies. The purpose of the research is to design a guide that allows for the calculation of the costs of academic and healthcare training for medical residents in a private center in the Dominican Republic. It is an exploratory, descriptive, prospective, and quantitative study, based on data obtained from the computer system of the Universidad Central del Este Medical Center and on the Activity-Based Costing (ABC) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) models. For this purpose, a guide was designed whose methodology allows, when applied, to identify direct and indirect costs, their collection, data analysis, classification of costs by categories, total training costs, calculation of indicators using the collected data, in five stages: determination of units and data collection, definition of elements for costing, cost calculation, results analysis, and information consolidation, in nineteen steps that explain and complete the process to obtain a real cost. It is concluded that an optimal way to determine the teaching and healthcare costs involved in resident training is through activity-based costing combined with hospital data.