URS: een kostbare aangelegenheid?

Costs within healthcare are rising. Awareness of actual costs (instead of mean DBC prices) is essential to reduce healthcare costs. We prospectively registered data concerning procedure time, materials, present personnel, admission and follow-up were in 72 ureterorenoscopy (URS) procedures. The mean total costs of a URS-procedure were € 2,819. Within these costs the largest cost driver existed of surgical costs (€ 2,075; 67.0%), followed by costs for admission (€ 514; 22.8%) and follow-up costs (€ 230; 10.2%). Eight patients underwent a procedure where the stone passed spontaneously previous to the operation and had a dated CT-scan (> 1 month old). The costs of these procedures could have been saved by performing an additional pre-operative CT-scan. This would save € 62 per procedure. The actual costs of a URS procedure in this cohort were € 2,819 in which surgical costs (€ 2,075) was the largest cost item. Ensuring that recent imaging is available during the procedure could spare unnecessary procedures and costs.