Re: Billing for Services

["Dale E. Boyce" <dale@radpro.uchicago.edu>]

The radiation safety program at The University of Chicago has been
a recharge operation from the beginning.  In the early days, an
accountant sent out bills to each investigator, and then spent the
rest of his time trying to collect.  Eventually, we went to an
electronic feed to the Comptroller's billing/accounting system.
Once a month charges are compiled an put into an file on a mainframe
account that the Comptroller picks up in their monthly accounting.

Charges are based on an hourly or per service basis.  The per service
charges roughly reflect the time spent performing that service "on
average" and includes all overhead time related to that service.  An
example would be routine surveys of labs.  We charge for about one
half hour per lab.  Individual surveys may take from as little as
fifteen minutes to as much as an hour if problems are found.  More
than an hour and we charge for the total time actually used, including
transit time and the time spent in running wipe tests etc.

It does consume time do do recharge.  I spend at least one day a month
with billing.  It has been streamlined somewhat, and is being further
automated, but there are at present limits that prevent certain things
from being automated.  If anyone needs a detailed breakdown of what we
do and/or our fee schedule please send me email directly and I will
try to answer any questions.
   __        _         __         __
  /  )      //        /  `       /  ) dale@radpro.uchicago.edu       
 /  / __.  // _      /--        /--<  ____  ,   _. _ "Fear is not a
/__/_(_/|_</_</_    (___, o    /___/_(_) (_/___(__</_ stochastic effect
"A mind is a terrible thing to lose." D.Q./   of ionizing radiation." D.B.
                                         '