"Increasing energy end-use efficiency — technologically providing more desired service per unit of delivered energy consumed — is generally the largest, least expensive, most benign, most quickly deployable, least visible, least understood and most neglected way to provide energy services," the Rocky Mountain Institute's chief executive and founder, Amory Lovins, wrote in 2005.
From our perspective, the key to enhancing health is to focus on maximizing health outcomes, rather than on expanding units of delivered service [ 18], or investing almost exclusively in medical care.
Robust unit cost estimates are essential for the better use of resources, and information on the heterogeneity in the unit cost of delivering HIV services across facilities – both within and across countries – is critical to identifying and addressing inefficiencies.
A mail carrier accused of stashing thousands of pieces of mail in a storage unit instead of delivering them has pleaded guilty to deserting her route.
The company has also designed its own D.C. fast-charge unit, capable of delivering 480 volts, which would be called the Supercharger.
The assumptions for the scale up are provided in Table 6 and the unit costs of delivering the intervention district wide are reported in Table 7.
Information on the heterogeneity in the unit cost of delivering HIV services across facilities – both within and across countries – is critical to identifying and addressing inefficiencies.
Most of the cost estimates that have been made in response have assumed that unit costs of delivering services will not change as coverage increases or as more and more interventions are delivered together.
The intensity of use of services under the two scenarios could differ, and consequently the unit cost of delivering the services may vary, as indicated by Cleary et al [ 7].
Most current estimates are likely to be substantially incorrect, however, with perhaps the most important problem the assumption that the unit costs of delivering services – for example, the costs per visit to a primary health facility, or the costs of a day in hospital – will not change as coverage increases or as more interventions are delivered together [ 2, 3].
Costs incurred by health care providers (mainly MTCs in the districts) will be collected using trial monitoring data on the change in service use, combined with key informant interviews and available financial data on the average unit cost of delivering those services.
