The bulk of your procedure costs are most often comprised of the items you’ve ordered, received and used in AMSHub. Tracking the costs of these items and using them to calculate numerous metrics throughout AMSHub is happening all the time through your normal process of managing inventory. But there are some important additional tools in AMSHub you can and should be using to help drive more accurate case costing.
First, let’s look at our Resources feature. A Resource in AMSHub, is anything you want to be able to assign a cost to and attach to a procedure. This could be anything from masks and gloves to meds or staff time. It’s designed to be generic enough to give you broad latitude in deciding what you want to include.
Using Resources is also designed to be very simple: provide a reference number (most of our facilities try and use a manufacturer reference or item number where applicable, but you can also make up any unique combination of letters and numbers), name, optional description, and cost. That’s all that’s required. AMSHub will add it to your Resource list, generate a unique internal identifier, and immediately allow you to use this new Resource by attaching it to a Procedure, just as you would any standard Inventory item.
To simplify the use of Resources even further, we created Resource Bundles. This allows you to add multiple Resources to a single named group and then easily attach that Bundle, and all it’s underlying Resources, to a Procedure. In a few clicks you can add dozens of Resources, and their associated costs, to a Procedure. That cost data will now be used in calculating not only the profitability of that specific procedure, but will ripple out into all of the expense, margin and profitability calculations throughout our Reporting and Analytics. Learn more about Resources and Resource Bundles.
Next, let’s look at the Fixed Cost setting that can be defined globally for each Procedure Type. This is another way to assign costs beyond standard inventory items you’ll scan into a completed procedure. Much like Resources, this value can derived from any number of expenses, from personnel to utilities and more. The cost is procedure type-specific, so think about the costs incurred consistently for every procedure of a specific type. Assign a cost to those globally and then each time that procedure type is used to identify a procedure, those associated costs will automatically be added and used throughout the site. Fixed costs are configured in Settings > Procedure Types.
Another option for enhanced case cost is our Personnel expense feature. Using this feature enables AMSHub to automatically calculate the cost of techs and nurses in a procedure down to the minute. Learn more about configuring this here. This is a great way to ensure you’re getting a procedure-specific cost as accurate as possible with no additional work needed.
Take some time to add Resources and calculate Fixed Costs for your Procedure Types. Start adding Resources to every Procedure. You’ll immediately see dramatically better and more accurate information about the costs your facility realizes as well as your profitability.