This paper describes a model used to calculate the cost of educating and training a six-year medical student. The model was initially developed at Thai Binh Medical School in Vietnam, and has been replicated at two other medical schools. To our knowledge, this is the first time that this type of full-cost analysis has been used to calculate the cost of medical education in a low-income developing country. As Vietnam shifts to a market -oriented economy, the traditional, fully subsidized medical education has given way to a financing system combining student fees with per-head allocations to the medical school. Full cost information will be essential for setting these fees, and for adjusting budget allocations between the medical school, the teaching hospital, and various community health centers. While intuitively simple, the model provides useful, readily understandable, and previously unavailable information to managers and policy-makers. The total cost of teaching all 6-year medical students at Thai-Binh Medical School was identified, and the costs were allocated to the three main program areas of the school. The cost for each year of the six-year medical student's career was calculated, and the cost per graduate was determined. The full cost per graduate was 143,732,038 Vietnamese Dong (US$ 12,285) and the expenditure distribution across the curriculum components was Preparatory work 12%, Medical science 26% and Clinical teaching 62%.
NOTE TO REVIEWERS: Phi Van Tham was an MPH student at the time this paper was written, and he is a Vietnamese national.
Learning Objectives: After attending this session, participants will be able to: 1. Identify three reasons why costing of medical education is essential in Vietnam and elsewhere in the developing world. 2. Describe the factors that make medical education a particularly complex costing problem. 3. Discuss how an intuitively simple model can provide useful, easily understandable, and previously unavailable information to managers and policy makers
Keywords: Cost Issues, International Health
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: Thai Binh Medical School, Vietnam
I have a significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.
Relationship: The fieldwork for this study was performed as a consultancy by Dr. William Bicknell of the Department of International Health, at the request of the Vietnamese Ministry of Health. The work was supported in part by SIDA through a contract with InDevelop