Estimating costs of residential services

Abstract

This chapter presents a definition of residential care according to the community mental health care model and describes types of services according to size, staff, and structure. A brief review of varying costs of residential services in the literature is presented to explore the main research questions related to this issue and which factors are involved with their costs. Costing method involves transparency about results and methods used, comprehensiveness of data collection, and characterization of services and resident profiles. Crucial steps for estimating resident services should be based on determining the main question related to the costs of services; defining the study perspective, the time horizon for collecting data, and data collection methods; identifying services components of costs; estimating unit costs; and, ultimately, proceeding with cost analysis. We present one example of costing residential services following these steps using data from a Brazilian study of costing residential services in the city of São Paulo.