How to Calculate Gratuity in UAE: Your Ultimate Guide to End-of-Service Benefits
16/12/2025
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Running a hospital, specialty clinic, or diagnostic center in the UAE ?. You know that cost control is not just a financial necessity, but also a regulatory, operational, and strategic priority, especially under the Abu Dhabi Department of Health (DOH) regulations. That’s where a clinical costing system becomes a game-changer for healthcare facilities across the UAE.
At Young & Right, Dubai’s trusted accounting and tax consultancy, we help clinics and hospitals in Abu Dhabi and the UAE transition from guesswork to precision with dedicated clinical costing solutions. A clinical costing framework delivers actionable insights to power smarter decisions, unlock savings, and align with Abu Dhabi’s value-based healthcare model.
Let’s explore what a clinical costing system entails, how it works, why it’s globally adopted, and how your facility can leverage DOH clinical costing standards to thrive in Abu Dhabi’s healthcare ecosystem.
A clinical costing system is a healthcare-specific framework or software designed to calculate, allocate, and analyze the true cost of healthcare services, from medical procedures to patient-level care pathways. Unlike traditional accounting, it integrates clinical and financial data to provide granular insights into direct and indirect costs, ensuring compliance with DOH clinical costing requirements.
For example, while general accounting might show your cardiology department is costly, a patient-level clinical costing system could reveal that just 3% of high-risk patients drive 45% of costs, which helps to enable targeted interventions. This level of detail is critical for DOH compliance and supports value-based care initiatives across the UAE.
The purpose of clinical costing extends beyond cost tracking. It empowers healthcare facilities in the UAE to optimize resources, enhance pricing strategies, and meet DOH standards for clinical cost data collection and reporting.
Compliance with the Department of Health (DOH) clinical costing standards is mandatory for healthcare providers in Abu Dhabi. These standards ensure accurate, consistent, and transparent cost data is submitted via the Shafafiya platform to support the emirate's value-based care model.
The DOH has issued three main documents to govern this process:
Sets the foundational principles for patient-level costing, requiring the separation of direct/indirect costs and annual XML submission via Shafafiya.
Provides a practical roadmap with detailed instructions, templates, and best practices for implementing the standard.
Details the technical specs, data formats, and cybersecurity protocols required for successful data submission.
Together, these documents form the backbone of Abu Dhabi’s value-based funding framework. Compliance is mandatory for all patient-care facilities, and non-compliance risks penalties.
At Young & Right, we specialize in helping healthcare providers navigate these standards, ensuring seamless compliance from data mapping to generating audit-ready submissions.
The rise of clinical costing systems was driven by escalating healthcare costs, inefficiencies, and the global shift toward value-based care. Key milestones include:
UK’s NHS:
In 2009, the Department of Health introduced Patient-Level Information and Costing Systems (PLICS) to replace average-based costing to enhancing precision.
Australia:
The National Hospital Cost Data Collection (NHCDC) standardized clinical cost data collection to support fair pricing in public and private hospitals.
US:
The 1990s saw Activity-Based Costing (ABC) adopted to address inaccuracies in traditional cost allocation, particularly in complex specialties like oncology.
These frameworks laid the groundwork for modern clinical costing standards, such as the Australian Hospital Patient Costing Standards (AHPCS) and Abu Dhabi clinical costing standards, ensuring consistency and comparability.
A clinical costing system transforms raw data into actionable insights through a structured clinical costing process:
→ Data Collection:
Integrates clinical and financial information from EHRs, billing systems, and ledgers—covering medications, MRI usage, nursing time, and more.
→ Cost Identification and Allocation:
Separates direct costs (e.g., surgeon’s fees, equipment) from indirect costs (e.g., utilities, admin) using bottom-up (microcosting) or top-down (averaging) methods.
→ Activity Mapping:
Assigns costs to specific activities or care pathways, such as every step in a knee replacement surgery.
→ Cost Calculation and Variance Analysis:
Compares standard vs. actual costs per patient case, using dashboards to identify inefficiencies.
→ Reporting and Benchmarking:
Generates internal reports for clinician performance and external clinical cost data collection and technical documents for DOH compliance and pricing.
Platforms like IQVIA’s PLICS leverage clinical costing methodology to support end-to-end clinical costing with seamless integration.
Clinical costing systems vary in precision, complexity, and scalability. Here’s a breakdown of the main types and their relevance to healthcare providers across Abu Dhabi:
PLICS tracks costs at the patient level, analyzing every step of a patient’s journey from referral to discharge, which is crucial for delivering value-based patient care. It’s widely used in the UK’s NHS, where trusts like anonymized examples from studies such as ‘Chelsea’ (a specialist trust) and ‘Gertrude’ (a general trust) use it for benchmarking and cost-saving. PLICS supports DOH compliance by providing the granular, meaningful cost data required for DOH submission and value-based care. This patient-level information and costing approach is fundamental to Abu Dhabi’s clinical costing standards.
ABC allocates costs based on specific activities (e.g., registration, surgery) using cost drivers like time or volume. For example, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) used ABC to identify that a subset of high-risk pregnancies drove disproportionate neonatal costs, reshaping care delivery. The relationship between clinical costing services like ABC and operational improvement is clear, providing a framework for healthcare providers across the UAE to analyze efficiency.
TDABC uses time as the primary cost driver, calculating costs based on time spent and per-minute rates. It’s effective for surgical procedures but requires accurate time-tracking to avoid skewed results.
Micro-costing tracks actual resource consumption for patient-level clinical costing, ideal for complex treatments like oncology. It’s resource-intensive but highly precise, making it a gold standard for generating meaningful cost data that aligns with Abu Dhabi’s clinical costing standards and guidelines. This method is designed for healthcare facilities providing direct patient care for complex conditions.
These top-down methods estimate costs using ratios or standardized units. Common in US hospitals, they’re simpler but less precise, making them less ideal for the DOH requirements and clinical costing standards now in place. While they can be used for internal benchmarking of costing results against financial statements, they are generally not sufficient to meet DOH compliance for reporting.
A strong clinical costing solution delivers transformative benefits for healthcare facilities in Abu Dhabi and the UAE:
Around the world, healthcare systems are using detailed cost data to benchmark performance, optimize high-resource care, and streamline operations for greater efficiency and equity.
Despite their value, clinical costing systems face hurdles:
Navigating DOH clinical costing requirements can be daunting, but Young & Right transforms compliance into a strategic advantage for healthcare facilities in Abu Dhabi and the UAE. Here’s how our clinical costing experts support your costing journey:
We design customized cost ledgers aligned with Abu Dhabi clinical costing standards, ensuring accurate separation of direct and indirect costs. For example, we helped a Dubai clinic restructure their ledger in days, achieving DOH compliance with confidence.
Using advanced clinical costing methodology, we deliver patient-level clinical costing to uncover the true cost of services. This supports activity-based budgeting and identifies savings, integrating with corporate tax compliance for a holistic strategy.
We manage the clinical cost data collection process, from data mapping to validation, ensuring compliance with DOH technical standards and requirements, such as cybersecurity. A recent client achieved error-free DOH data submissions in under a week.
We reconcile clinical and financial data to match costs with patient records, ensuring audit readiness and compliance with DOH.
From designating a clinical costing coordinator to configuring secure DOH system access, we align your processes with Abu Dhabi clinical costing guidelines for a seamless experience.
We connect our DOH-compliant clinical costing services to budgeting or ERP systems, enabling data-driven decisions. For example, we helped a Dubai hospital optimize outpatient services, boosting profitability and patient satisfaction in line with Abu Dhabi’s value-based care model.
A complete clinical costing system is vital for balancing quality care with financial sustainability in Abu Dhabi’s healthcare ecosystem. At Young & Right, our DOH-compliant clinical costing services empower your organization to meet DOH clinical costing standards, optimize efficiency, and drive growth. Contact us today for tailored clinical costing solutions to elevate your operations across the UAE.
Partner with Young & Right to implement a fully compliant, audit-ready clinical costing system that drives performance, compliance, and patient-level insights across your healthcare facility in Abu Dhabi or the UAE.
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