Patent ID: 7149700

Claim:
A method of performing costing of tasks including healthcare activities, said method comprising: a) establishing a list of healthcare tasks involved in a work process wherein said healthcare tasks involves execution by a human operator; b) for each task, determining: (1) how much the time to complete the task can vary from a standard with a single person and from person to person, (2) the frequency the task is performed, (3) how easy it is to measure the time to perform the task, (4) how many sub-components the task has, (5) whether the task requires analysis or thinking, (6) the complexity of the task, (7) if standard charges for the task by law exist, and (8) the financial impact of the task, c) for each task, deciding which one of four available methods of measurement should be used for calculating the duration of the task depending on the determining step, including: (1) expert opinions, (2) time studies, (3) industry standards, and (4) an operator independent method of task time measurement based on independently timing each motion in a procession of motions required to perform said healthcare task without timing from a beginning of said healthcare task to an end of said healthcare task a human performing said healthcare task; d) establishing a first cost component of each healthcare task as a function of the duration of said healthcare task and the cost per unit time for said human operator; e) establishing a second cost component of each healthcare task dependent on non-labor costs of the process, a portion of each non-labor cost being apportioned to said healthcare task as a function of the time of execution of said healthcare task by said human operator, machine operating time or other relative consumption of a resource; f) maintaining the expected time to complete said activities and the cost per unit time of said operator in a memory of a computer; and g) calculating a task cost using a processor of said computer including the step of summing the first and second components for the healthcare task to establish the cost of the healthcare task.