The second national hospital costing study: background, results and implications.

The costing of hospital outputs, and especially of acute admitted patients categorised by DRG, has been the focus of considerable attention in the last decade. Many individual hospitals now routinely estimate the costs of their main products, several State and Territory health authorities undertake periodic multi-site studies, and there have been a few one-off national studies. This paper summarises the methods and results of the most recent national study, which measured costs at a sample of public and private hospitals around Australia for the 1996-97 financial year. We briefly describe the main results and note some implications.