Exercise 7-40 Activity-Based Product Costing
Suppose that a surgical ward has gathered the following information for four nursing activities and two types of patients:
Patient Category
| Driver | Normal | Intensive | Activity Rate | |
| Treating patients | Treatments | 6,400 | 8,000 | $4.00 |
| Providing hygienic care | Hygienic hours | 4,800 | 17,600 | 5.00 |
| Responding to requests | Requests | 32,000 | 80,000 | 2.00 |
| Monitoring patients | Monitoring hours | 6,000 | 72,000 | 3.00 |
Required:
1. Determine the total nursing costs assigned to each patient category.
2. Output is measured in patient days. Assuming that the normal patient category uses 8,000 patient days and the intensive patient category uses 6,400 patient days, calculate the nursing cost per patient day for each type of patient.
3. CONCEPTUAL CONNECTION The supervisor of the surgical ward has suggested that patient days is the only driver needed to assign nursing costs to each type of patient. Calcu- late the charge per patient day (rounded to the nearest cent) using this approach and then explain to the supervisor why this would be a bad decision.
