Table 5 Potential cost savings to the public hospital sector (A$)

Cost savings to govt. per RITH episode

¹ IHACPA, National Efficient Price Determination 2021–22, Appendix 1 [22]

² IHACPA, National Efficient Price Determination 2021–22, page 7 [22]

³ = Episodic cost weight x NEP per single cost weight

⁴ As shown in Table 4

⁵ Current inpatient cost per episode LESS the modelled RITH episode cost

⁶ Cost savings attributable to RITH per episode expressed as a percentage of the current inpatient cost per episode

⁷ This is the number of inpatient reconditioning rehabilitation episodes that might be substitutable by RITH, limited to capital cities, and is based on the AN-SNAP reconditioning episodes reported to AROC in the 2019 (the last pre-Covid) year [2], adjusted for the DELPHI-derived anticipated utilisation of RITH (Additional File 1)

⁸ Potential annual cost savings to government from RITH if estimated substitutable episodes are taken up

 Cost weight per episode type¹

2.30x

3.01x

3.23x

4.11x

2.83x

 NEP per single cost weight²

$5,597

 Current inpatient cost per episode^{3, b}

$12,850

$16,825

$18,064

$22,976

$15,820

 Less: modelled RITH costs per episode⁴

($9,817)

($11,820)

($12,737)

($15,491)

($11,371)

 Equals: cost savings to govt. per episode⁵

$3,033

$5,005

$5,327

$7,486

$4,449

 Percentage cost savings to govt. per episode⁶

23.6%

29.7%

29.5%

32.6%

28.1%

Potential cost savings to govt. per annum

 Modelled number of substitutable episodes per annum⁷

881

1,205

258

115

2,459

 Cost savings to govt. per annum⁸

$2.67 m

$6.03 m

$1.38 m

$0.86 m

$10.94 m