Cost per unit of service — methodology

In several places on this site we show the same kind of number: how much money goes into one unit of service delivered. Cost per resolved case, cost per kilometre, cost per hospital case. The rules behind them are set out here once.

What it measures — and what it does not

The number is cost per unit of service delivered: money divided by units delivered. It is not an outcome. A "resolved case" does not mean a justly resolved case; a "hospital case" does not mean a cured patient; a kilometre of road does not mean a safe road. Paying for outcomes ties money to measured change in people's lives — cost per unit is a far more modest thing.

Three limits

Attribution — the number does not separate the institution's contribution from legislative change, the economic cycle and demography. A rising cost per case may be inefficiency, or it may be harder cases.
Quality — the denominator counts units, not what they were worth to the person. An institution that works faster and more superficially looks cheaper.
Direction — a falling cost is not automatically good. An investment that raises the unit cost today and improves it tomorrow reads as deterioration.

First law: matching scope

Numerator and denominator must cover the same thing. The courts' budget is divided by the courts' cases — not the whole judiciary's budget, which quietly folds tens of millions of euro of prosecution money into the cost of one court case. The mistake is invisible in the result: the number looks plausible, it is simply wrong by a constant factor.

Second law: case mix

When the units are not alike, a raw average means nothing. A hospital case can be dialysis at €25 or a transplant at €20,000. Comparison between institutions is therefore made against the expected cost for their own case mix. Where no such adjustment is possible, no between-institution comparison is published.

Where it is used

Each number is computed where its data lives, and carries its own scope:

Cost per resolved case — the courts' own appropriation divided by the cases they resolved; excludes the prosecution, the Supreme Court of Cassation and the Supreme Administrative Court on both sides.
Cost per kilometre — contract value divided by the length of the section, only where the type of work allows a defensible figure.

Health has no such tile yet. Nationally the number is computable — about €586 per case for 2025 — but comparison between hospitals requires a case-mix adjustment and is therefore not published.

It is not an index

There is no cross-sector "efficiency index". Cost per case, cost per kilometre and cost per hospital case are not commensurable; averaging them would manufacture a number corresponding to nothing. The family is a shared method, not a shared scale.