DCP3 series editor Ramanan Laxminarayan and research scientist Susmita Chatterjee conducted a study on costs of common surgical procedures in five representative Indian hospitals. The full study was published in BMJ Open on June 11, and can be found here.
They found that the cost of similar, common procedures varied greatly at each hospital, often for inexplicable reasons. DCP3 senior health economist Carol Levin contributed to the study.
The study looked at a 57-bed urban charitable hospital, a 200-bed urban private hospital, a 400-bed semi-urban district hospital, a 655-bed rural private teaching hospital and a 778-bed urban tertiary care teaching hospital between March 2010 and 2011. The research team identified 13 common procedures and calculated the average cost of those procedures at each hospital.
Dr. Chatterjee told The Hindu, "We found that despite having state-of-the-art facilties, the charity hospital had low bed occupancy and was conducting very few procedures in the year, which made each procedure then far more expensive."
Visit the Essential Surgery volume page to learn more about the work DCP3 is doing related to surgery.