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
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Institutions recovered 20–76% of the total animal care costs through recharge mechanisms.
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Participating institutions practiced different approaches to cost accounting for care of research animals.
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Institutional funding of various components of animal care varied widely.
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In most of the participating institutions, charges to investigators were only loosely related to underlying costs.
Operating Costs
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Direct labor is the largest and most important factor in determining costs, representing 50–65% of the cost structure.
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Labor performance improves with increasing program scale.
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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.
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Labor performance tends to improve as activity is concentrated around fewer investigators or as average investigator activity increases.
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Animal care programs with moderate scale and high complexity (many species and many services) have some structural explanations for higher costs.
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Improving direct labor performance is a very effective way to reduce operating costs.
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Reduce complexity by consolidating activity into fewer rooms and facilities wherever possible.
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Focus on improving performance of animal care staff, through close measurement and management.
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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.
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Administrative and Indirect Costs
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Complexity of animal care program administration can materially affect costs.
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Animal purchasing and setup costs can have a substantial impact on short-term protocols and protocols that use expensive animals.
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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
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Veterinary technicians, animal technicians, and veterinary residents can extend the capacity of the professional veterinary staff.
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Number of investigators per veterinarian and number of protocols per veterinarian have little correlation across institutions.
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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.