20 Reducing health care.pmd

1Department of Health Policy and Management, Faculty of Medicine, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid, Jordan. 2Department of Community Medicine; 4Department of Business Education, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan. 3Department of Business and Economics, Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Virginia, United States of America. Received: 24/12/02; accepted: 31/03/03 ABSTRACT Jordan spends around 9% of its GDP on health care services, a high figure compared with similar developing countries. This study assessed staffing patterns in relation to Ministry of Health expenditures in a nationally representative sample of 97 primary care facilities. The economic costs of primary care facilities amounted to Jordanian dinar (JD) 42.3 million. Personnel costs consumed 53.8% of recurrent costs and in monetary terms the amount of down time (time not being used effectively) amounted to JD 9.7 million (about US$ 13.7 million). The Ministry should consider changing the functioning of its primary care facilities to obtain a more cost-effective use of staff time.