Table 4 RITH program costs per episode (A$)

Costs by clinician type¹

¹ Clinical staff costings are based on mid-range experience level staff, and full-time equivalent annual salaries, based on NSW Health published award rates 2021 [24]. Hourly rates are then developed, adjusted for the following:

- Staff are deemed only available to work 42 out of 52 weeks per year (the 10 weeks that staff are deemed to not be available are: 2 weeks of paid public holidays; 4 weeks of annual leave; 2 weeks of sick/carer’s leave; and 2 weeks to account for other leave types, such as paid parental leave and long service leave

- We also assume that only 80% of clinical staff time is directly patient attributable. The 20% of time deemed not to be patient attributable is the time required for staff to attend to, for example, mandatory and other training, other administrative tasks and meetings

- Hourly rates are based on a 38-h working week (or 7.6 h per day)

- For allied health and nursing staff, hourly rates include apportioning the 50% Saturday salary loading

- Hourly rates are inclusive of direct employment on-costs, which are superannuation entitlement at 10.5% of salary and workers compensation of 4.1% (workers compensation is based on NSW iCare premiums for 2020/21 for employees in the ‘Home Care’ category [25])

- Other (corporate) overheads are shown in Other (non-clinical) costs

² Allied health clinicians costed at a weighted average of $96.08 per hour (allied health professionals [$104.43] and AHAs [$62.66])

³ Rehabilitation nurses and clinical case managers are costed at $104.43 per hour

⁴ Rehabilitation physicians are costed at $227.15

⁵ Based on the total clinical OOS shown in Table 3

⁶ Based on 40 min of travel per in-home OOS

⁷ Based on one case conference [15 min] per week with 5 clinicians (incl 1 × Rehab Physician) plus 5 min per clinician per call for ‘tele-connectivity issues. The MDT huddles are considered cost equivalent to one case conference per week

⁸ Based on the clinical case manager spending 4 h (two 2-h planning/case coordination sessions [Table 3]) per week in planning and 2 h per week of clinical case manager patient service

⁹ An amount of $40 per episode (40 min per episode at a staff cost of $60/hour) is included to cover administrative support, including patient intake administrative tasks

¹⁰ A corporate overhead charge of 14.4% is used. This is based on a derivation from AIHW data for NSW public hospitals [26]. The derivation is calculated as follows: (administrative and clerical staff + other administrative expenses) / (total recurrent expenses, including depreciation)

¹¹ Travel reimbursement to staff assumes staff using their private vehicles (i.e., not a fleet model for vehicles) and is based on 25 km of travel per in-home OOS, and a travel reimbursement to the staff member of 90 cents per km. The 25 km per in-home OOS travel assumes 40 min of travel at 37.5 km per hour

¹² Based on $350 per week for in-home support services

¹³ Based on an average of $5 for consumables per in-home allied health or other clinical OOS

¹⁴ Annual depreciation over 5 years for an equipment pool of $200 k

 Allied health clinicians²

$4,524

$5,452

$5,878

$7,154

$5,244

46.1

 Rehabilitation Nurse³

$410

$494

$532

$648

$475

4.2

 Rehabilitation Physician⁴

$728

$877

$945

$1,151

$844

7.4

 Clinical case manager³

$1,415

$1,705

$1,838

$2,237

$1,640

14.4

 Salary & on-costs per episode

$7,077

$8,528

$9,194

$11,190

$8,203

72.1

Costs by service type

 Direct patient servicing time⁵

$2,712

$3,268

$3,523

$4,288

$3,143

27.6

 Travel time⁶

$1,626

$1,960

$2,113

$2,571

$1,885

16.6

 Case conferencing/MDT rapid rounds⁷

$685

$825

$889

$1,082

$794

7.0

 Case management & planning⁸

$2,054

$2,476

$2,669

$3,248

$2,381

20.9

 Salary & on-costs per episode

$7,077

$8,528

$9,914

$11,190

$8,203

72.1

Other (non-clinical) costs

 Administrative support/intake⁹

$40

$40

$40

$40

$40

0.3

 Corporate overhead charge¹⁰

$1,410

$1,700

$1,832

$2,230

$1,635

14.4

 Travel reimbursement¹¹

$564

$680

$733

$892

$654

5.8

 Home support costs¹²

$585

$705

$760

$925

$678

6.0

 Consumables¹³

$125

$151

$163

$198

$145

1.3

 Equipment depreciation¹⁴

$16

$16

$16

$16

$16

0.1

 Modelled RITH costs per episode

$9,817

$11,820

$12,737

$15,491

$11,371

100.0