Estimating costs of periodontal treatment in public sector dental specialist clinics

Materials and methods Five periodontal specialist clinics in the Ministry of Health were randomly selected. A list of periodontal procedures was identified by an expert group. Procedures were classified as diagnostics, non-surgical periodontics and periodontal surgeries. Costing for each procedure was primarily activity-based to measure cost of dental equipment, consumables and labour cost (average treatment time). Expenditures for administration, utilities and maintenance at clinics used unit cost calculations employed from step-down approach. A total of 165 patients newly diagnosed with periodontitis were followed up for one year to determine the cost of managing these patients during the said period.