How the Organization of Medical Record Keeping in a Hospital Ward Affects the Level of Direct and Indirect Costs: Model Approach

Keeping medical records is the process that is necessary for the functioning of healthcare due to legal and epidemiological requirements. The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of the way the process of keeping medical records in a hospital ward is organized on the level of direct costs of this ward related to administrative processes and indirect (social) costs in healthcare resulting from the involvement of medical staff in administrative processes. We have created a model of a hospital ward functioning in conditions of limited human resources and assumed medical demand for health services. We examined the initial level of direct costs of the medical records process and the level of indirect costs associated with patients waiting to be admitted to the ward. Reorganization of the process and allocation of part of the activities to non-medical staff will increase the availability of medical personnel, which will allow more patients to be admitted. Assuming there is no bottleneck in other parts of the treatment process, this results in a decrease in direct costs of the process of keeping medical records and indirect costs related to waiting in the queue for treatment.