[Pricing system for costly equipment. Cost allocation adapted to technical operating costs]

1. Our study consists on analysing annual technical operating costs (excluding professional fees) of computed tomography and extracorporeal lithotripsy in order to define a pricing system able to provide proper reimbursements of technical costs for costly equipment. 2. Economic and utilization data have been collected from physicians responsible for facilities and from equipment current manufacturers. Annual charges are assessed in function of annual volume of procedures. 3. Definition of mean costs (total mean cost, mean cost of one more procedure) and mean cost distribution analysis according to annual volume of procedures lead to propose a method for financing costly technical medical activities based on a two-price rate: until a defined number of procedures is reached, a full-rate reimbursement is applied and then, it is replaced by a reduced-rate reimbursement. 4. Such a pricing system is easy to manage and allows to fit annual technical receipts to annual technical expenditure on a wide range of patient procedure volume.