Estimating the human resource costs of developing and implementing shared medical appointments in primary care.

We used activity-based costing to estimate the human resource costs for developing and implementing a program to support shared medical appointments (SMAs) and an additional SMA on cancer survivorship.

In-depth, key informant interviews were conducted to determine completed tasks, personnel involved, and time to complete tasks.

Introducing new providers or a new type of SMA may require relatively modest incremental organizational resources and provider time (<8% of time and about 15% of the finances required to start the initial SMA). Time and cost could possibly be further decreased by leveraging relevant materials from existing SMAs.