Building an activity‐based costing hospital model using quality function deployment and benchmarking

Purpose – To use quality function deployment (QFD)/benchmarking for building an optimal activity‐based costing (ABC) model using baseline information from five different Spanish hospitals. Design/methodology/approach – The customer satisfaction benchmarking process in QFD is discussed along with the benefits of hierarchical benchmarks in specifying areas of strategic competition and the logically ensuing product/service strategic decision‐making requirements. A case study is presented to illustrate the use of two methodological approaches: benchmarking and QFD to obtain the final product of the paper: an optimal ABC. Findings – The resulting outcome from the QFD/benchmarking analysis is an ABC model, which has the customer expectations and the requirements that hospitals are looking for. Research limitations/implications – Future research can benefit from this research by expanding the scope from hospitals to other types of industries in order to comparatively analyze the applicability of the proposed tools, and applying the same methodology to other hospitals for developing a model for a standardized costing system in health care industry. Practical implications – With the outcomes produced by the methodology applied in this paper, hospital strategic decision makers can now have specifics on which to base decisions regarding the most appropriate allocation of time, human and capital resources. Originality/value – The paper presents a new approach for developing an optimal ABC for healthcare by applying two important methodologies: benchmarking and QFD. The use and modification of these methodologies in healthcare are new to research for achieving a final ABC model that will easily identify any performance improvements.