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Strategies That Influence Cost Containment in Animal Research Facilities (2000)

Chapter: Appendix B: Summary of Findings from the Ohio State University - Committee on Institutional Cooperation Study (CIC)

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Findings from the Ohio State University - Committee on Institutional Cooperation Study (CIC)." National Research Council. 2000. Strategies That Influence Cost Containment in Animal Research Facilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10006.
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APPENDIX B
Summary of Findings from the Ohio State University – Committee on Institutional Cooperation Study (CIC)

The summary of findings published in this report may not reflect the opinions, policies, or practices of the individual institutions that participated in the study.

Cost-Recovery Approaches

  1. Institutions recovered 20–76% of the total animal care costs through recharge mechanisms.

  2. Participating institutions practiced different approaches to cost accounting for care of research animals.

  3. Institutional funding of various components of animal care varied widely.

  4. In most of the participating institutions, charges to investigators were only loosely related to underlying costs.

Operating Costs

  1. Direct labor is the largest and most important factor in determining costs, representing 50–65% of the cost structure.

  2. Labor performance improves with increasing program scale.

  3. Labor performance tends to improve as activity is concentrated in fewer facilities or as facilities are used more intensively. As the average number of labor hours per animal housing room increases, the labor cost per animal decreases.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Findings from the Ohio State University - Committee on Institutional Cooperation Study (CIC)." National Research Council. 2000. Strategies That Influence Cost Containment in Animal Research Facilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10006.
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  1. Labor performance tends to improve as activity is concentrated around fewer investigators or as average investigator activity increases.

  2. Animal care programs with moderate scale and high complexity (many species and many services) have some structural explanations for higher costs.

  3. Improving direct labor performance is a very effective way to reduce operating costs.

    1. Reduce complexity by consolidating activity into fewer rooms and facilities wherever possible.

    2. Focus on improving performance of animal care staff, through close measurement and management.

    3. Reduce complexity of care (activities other than direct animal care) to help to reduce other costs for supplies and services, transportation, supervision, and protective clothing. Alternatively, the cost of complex services should be recovered outside the per diem charge.

Administrative and Indirect Costs

  1. Complexity of animal care program administration can materially affect costs.

  2. Animal purchasing and setup costs can have a substantial impact on short-term protocols and protocols that use expensive animals.

  3. A mix of per diem and direct service charges makes good sense in that the user pays for special services. This mixture of charges assesses the true cost (assuming that the institution does not subsidize part of the animal care program from other institutional resources) of operations and maximizes the predictability of cost recovery. Accounting systems that roll these costs into their per diems are generally subsidizing short–term and complex projects or research with certain species at the expense of long–term and less complex projects.

Veterinary Staffing

  1. Veterinary technicians, animal technicians, and veterinary residents can extend the capacity of the professional veterinary staff.

  2. Number of investigators per veterinarian and number of protocols per veterinarian have little correlation across institutions.

  3. Other surveys have found reasonable correlation between veterinary staffing and the number of nonrodent mammals in an institution. As the number of rodents grows, this correlation may decrease.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Findings from the Ohio State University - Committee on Institutional Cooperation Study (CIC)." National Research Council. 2000. Strategies That Influence Cost Containment in Animal Research Facilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10006.
×
Page 65
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Summary of Findings from the Ohio State University - Committee on Institutional Cooperation Study (CIC)." National Research Council. 2000. Strategies That Influence Cost Containment in Animal Research Facilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10006.
×
Page 66
Next: Appendix C: Animal Research Survey-1999 and Survey Tables »
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Care and use of animals in research are expensive, prompting efforts to contain or reduce costs. Components of those costs are personnel, regulatory compliance, veterinary medical care, and laboratory animal management, equipment, and procedures. Many efforts have been made to control and reduce personnel costs, the largest contributing factor to cost, through better facility and equipment design, more efficient use of personnel, and automation of many routine operations. However, there has been no comprehensive, recent analysis of the various cost components or examination of the strategies that have been proven or are purported to decrease the cost of animal facility operation.

Strategies that Influence Cost Containment in Animal Research Facilities examines the current interpretation of governmental policy (Office of Management and Budget Circular A-21) concerning institutional reimbursement for overhead costs of an animal research facility and describes methods for economically operating an animal research facility. This report develops recommendations by which federal auditors and research institutions can establish what cost components of research animal facilities should be charged to institutions' indirect cost pool and what animal research facility cost components should be included in the per diem charges to investigators, and assesses the financial and scientific ramifications that these criteria would have among federally funded institutions. Further, the report determines the cost components of laboratory animal care and use in biomedical research and assesses and recommends methods of cost containment for institutions maintaining animals for biomedical research.

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