To analyse the cost of sterilisation in central sterile supply department (CSSD) of a tertiary care corporate hospital

The central sterile supply department is said to be a significant cost center in the hospital. Understanding various activities of CSSD in detail, managers can identify the required areas for cost management and improve the efficiency of the department. By analyzing costs, hospital management can ensure that the costs do not surpass the available revenues and subsidies. The objective of the study is to analyze the cost of sterilization of CSSD sets per unit in a 350 bedded tertiary care corporate hospital.An observational study was conducted to identify various cost elements involved and the workload on sterilizers. The cost was calculated under fixed and variable costs, using the average costing method. On an average 4723 were sterilized by autoclave and 1867 items by ETO per month in the CSSD. The average cost incurred per month for steam sterilization was Rs.2,15,767 and for EO gas sterilization is Rs.1,00,424, while the average cost incurred for sterilizing a set by autoclave and ETO was calculated to be Rs.45.68 and Rs.53.78 respectively.The findings of the study provided essential data on the utilization of resources and the amount incurred on the provision of the services, aiding in the optimization of the costs on resources and pricing to the patients.