History of CCSAA
The Clinical Costing Standards Association of Australia (CCSAA) was incorporated in June 1998. The primary concern of the association is to develop clinical costing standards through a consultative process with clinical costing managers across a number of Health Services.
The need for a clinical costing association rose out of the formation of the Clinical Costing Standards Committee that began in January 1997. The committee consists of Clinical Costing Managers from Victorian Health Care Networks and regional and interstate healthcare organisations. As an industry group, it is the conduit for producing the clinical costing standards.
A key workshop was conducted in October 1999 as the first step in attempting to establish a standard clinical costing approach between Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia. As a result of this effort the current CCSAA standards are now either fully compliant with the Queensland standards or any underlying state differences are highlighted in the ‘Notes’ area of the CCSAA standards.
Overseas membership of the CCSAA includes two New Zealand hospitals and the Department of Health & Children in Dublin, Ireland. In the 2001-02 financial year Professor Yuichi Imanaka from The Kyoto University, Graduate School of Medicine, Department of Healthcare Economics and Quality Management in Kyoto, Japan also acquired CCSAA membership and access to our standards. The 2006-07 financial year saw new CCSAA international membership in Mr. Peter Donnelly from the United Kingdom and Mr. Tolga Aktan from Turkey.
On September 26, 2001 a vote was taken by the Clinical Costing Standards Committee and the membership to accept the alignment of the Clinical Costing Standards Association of Australia Ltd. and the Clinical Costing User Group in Victoria (CCUG) under the banner of the “Clinical Costing Standards Association of Australia Ltd.” This vote was passed.
The group was structured as follows:
The overriding body, currently known as the CCSAA is the forum for general discussion, sub-committee presentations and issues relative to the industry. Depending on the agenda, interested non-members may also attend. Meetings of the CCSAA User Group will occur approximately 2-3 times per year. The chair of these meetings will be on a rotating basis.
The Clinical Costing Standards Committee (CCSC) will continue meeting for the purpose of developing and implementing standards and dealing with wider CCSAA and industry issues. Outcomes from the CCSC will be forwarded to the CCSAA. The CCSC will meet on a monthly basis and will continue to be chaired by Mr. Dean Athan
Special Interest Group Sub-committee. In the past this has encompassed the Benchmarking Sub-Committee (BSC) which met for the purpose of developing benchmarking initiatives for all participating hospitals. In the 2006-07 financial year the CCSAA also setup a Nurse Costing Sub-Committee. Outcomes of these committees will be forwarded directly to the CCSAA for review. The sub-committees meet as required.
In the future, a potential committee will be formed to focus on education issues.
The individual committees will operate autonomously but will present regular progress reports to the CCSAA.
Evolving from the May 2006 Clinical Costing User Group Meeting, the CCSAA organised a special Nurse Costing Forum. This forum took place on the 30th June 2006 and included two keynote speakers. Dr Virginia Plummer (Monash University, School of Nursing and Midwifery) spoke on “An Analysis of Patient Acuity Data Utilizing the TrendCare System”. Mr Kevin Ratcliffe, Department of Health, Tasmania spoke on “Clinical Costing of Nursing Activity – Benchmarking Project”.
In 2005-06 the CCSAA also commenced a complete re-development of the CCSAA website. The benefits of the new website include the ability to immediately update the site with new and updated standards, news and events. From a user point of view the new site will provide increased functionality and a better avenue for members to gain access to all CCSAA resources.
In 2006-07 the CCSAA also setup a committee to oversee research into the Nursing Complexity Pilot Study. The objective of this study is to do a comparative analysis of various models for allocating nursing costs using data from two hospitals. The results of this study were presented to the CCSAA in 2008 and were also presented to the Patient Classification Systems International Conference. This work was then incorporated into the clinical costing standards as the relative value ratings in CCS8 were refined using the broader empirical result from the Nurse Acuity Study.
In the same year the CCSC also undertook the review of two DHS cost consultancies and a major outcome of this was the development of two new CCSAA standard guidelines:
CCG1 Guideline for the Costing of Un-Qualified Newborns
CCG2 Guidelines for the Costing of Post Natal Domiciliary Services
The CCSAA continues to grow in Australia and internationally. In 2007-08 key NSW representatives including Vineet Makhija, and Bala Santhira from the NSW Department of Health took up CCSAA membership. Subsequently, David Perabo from NSW Health used the CCSAA standards as a basis for developing specific costing standards for the State of NSW.
In the United Kingdom the Clinical Costing Standards Association of England (CCSAE) was established and is based on the CCSAA model. Permission was given to the CCSAE to use CCSAA clinical costing standards as a basis to incorporate current CCSAA standards and to develop their own standards based on the Australian model.
In 2008-09 the CCSAA directors undertook a review of the CCSAA’s Charter and Terms of Reference. It was also agreed that the CCSAA would have two different classes of members:-
CCSAA Members
CCSC Members
Both of these classes of members come with different rights which are fully documented in the revised 2009 CCSAA Charter document.
In 2009-10 considerable work was commenced by the CCSAA in regards to supporting the National Activity based Funding initiatives. As well as providing feedback in regard to the National Standards, this included key presentations to the ABF Working Group and the National Hospital Cost Data Collection Technical Reference Group (TRG). The work also involved, over-viewing the role and function of the CCSAA and a synopsis of key CCSAA Clinical Costing Standards.
Finally, we are grateful to our NSW members and in particular Vineet Makhja from the Department of Health NSW. for visiting and joining our CCSC meeting on 7th April 2010. A key discussion point was the need for a CCSAA guideline document to focus on a standard suite of Clinical Costing Reporting for use in hospitals. This was a good opportunity to share in our common goals, to collaborate and further the interests of the clinical costing community across both States.
In 2010-11 considerable work was commenced by the CCSAA in regards to supporting the National Activity based Funding initiatives. As well as providing feedback in regard to the National Standards, this included key presentations to the ABF Working Group and the National Hospital Cost Data Collection Technical Reference Group (TRG). The work also involved, over-viewing the role and function of the CCSAA and a synopsis of key CCSAA Clinical Costing Standards.
