Cost accounting of telemedicine service items based on improved activity-based costing

Telemedicine can optimize deployment of medical resources and minimize diagnosis discrepancies.Formulation of a rational project pricing and scientific compensation policy will be conducive to its future development.The concept of human resource consumption in RBRVS was used as reference to improve the activity-based costing(ABC)method.The authors sorted out the resource cost repository, identified the activity system, classified the motivation resources into respective activity cost repositories, and calculated the cost of respective cost object distribution.The cost of three telemedicine service items(remote single discipline consultation, remote image consultation and remote pathology consultation were 119.69, 147.03 and 161.61 yuan respectively)was calculated by the improved ABC.It can better indicate project costs than that calculated by the traditional ABC(137.30, 147.17 and 144.08 yuan), and proves more consistent with the existing prices of other province(134.00, 150.00 and 174.00 yuan). Key words: Telemedicine; Activity-based costing; Cost accounting; Medical service