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 hospitals.  

The need for a clinical costing association rose out of the formation of the Clinical Costing Standards Committee, which began in January 1997.  The committee consists of Clinical Costing Managers from Victorian Health Care Networks and regional and interstate healthcare organisations.  This group 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:                                                              

 i.            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.                                                

 ii.            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.                                               

iii.            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.                                              

iv.            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 30^th 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 will be completed towards the end of 2007.