Driving Efficiency In Healthcare: How CBSNZ’s CostPro Is Transforming Patient Costing And Budgeting

Tuesday, 10 February 2026, 1:08 pm
Press Release: Costing and Business Solutions

Hospitals and clinics everywhere face the same mounting challenge: healthcare costs climbing faster than budgets. At the same time, health leaders are under pressure to improve outcomes and deliver more care with fewer resources. Yet many organisations still lack clear visibility of what each service really costs, where waste is occurring, and how budgets can be managed more efficiently.

Ross Wilson, CEO and founder of Costing and Business Solutions (CBS), says that is exactly why they created CostPro, the company’s seminal product.

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” he explains. “For too long, health funding was based on inputs - staff, beds, equipment - without linking it to the actual services patients received. We built CostPro to change that.”

The Challenge in Healthcare Finance

For decades, most health systems used input-based funding models. For example, hospitals were resourced based on the number of staff employed or beds available, but these inputs gave little insight into the true cost of care or the efficiency of services. It created little accountability, made comparisons difficult, and often allowed inefficiencies to hide in plain sight.

Activity-based costing, and its more detailed form patient costing, turned this model on its head. Instead of paying for inputs, regulators and hospitals can calculate the actual resources consumed in delivering each service or procedure. Every nurse’s shift, every diagnostic test, every hour in theatre can be matched to the patient who received it. The result is a complete picture of cost and quality.

Wilson argues that this visibility is transformative. “High cost almost always means poor quality,” he says. “If a patient has a fall or develops a bed sore, that creates more activity and more cost. By linking cost to activity, you shine a light on where systems are failing and where improvement is needed.”

How CostPro Works

CostPro was designed by CBS to make this level of transparency accessible to hospitals large and small. Originally developed in the 1990s as an alternative to an expensive overseas mainframe in New Zealand, it has evolved into a powerful software suite trusted by health systems across the country, along with Australia and the Middle East.

At its core, CostPro delivers accurate patient costing data. It allows hospitals to track every dollar spent across services, specialties and patient cohorts, and to benchmark costs between departments and clinicians. The system groups patients with similar diagnoses and procedures, making it possible to set fair prices for treatment and identify outliers.

Crucially, it moves funding from an input model to an output model. Rather than paying hospitals for the resources they consume, regulators can fund them for the services they deliver - for example, a hip replacement at a set price. Hospitals that run efficiently can deliver the service for less and reinvest the savings into patient care.

From Costing to Forecasting

While costing remains at the heart of CostPro, CBS has built new modules to tackle broader financial management challenges. One of the most powerful is Scenario Modeling, which enables hospitals to plan, budget and forecast with unprecedented speed.

Traditionally, health boards might spend four to six months building budgets for the following year. At Victoria’s Barwon Health, CBS demonstrated how CostPro could compress that process into just two days. Running CostPro alongside Barwon’s existing budget model, the results matched within 0.6 percent - showing the system could deliver accurate results in a fraction of the time.

Wilson says the key is that Scenario Modeling uses real patient activity and cost data as its base. “We can extrapolate forward and say, if you treat 10 percent more patients next year, what does that do to your cost structure? What happens if you open a new service line? What if length of stay comes down? You can model those scenarios instantly, and build a robust budget grounded in reality.”

CBS is also developing a forecasting module that automatically generates monthly predictions based on current activity. This means finance teams can spot risks early, avoid blowouts, and adjust course before it is too late.

Proven Results: Case Studies

CostPro’s first major test came in 2001 at Rotorua Hospital, where the existing mainframe system was costing around $200,000 a year. CBS offered CostPro at $12,000. The savings were immediate, but so too was the improvement in usability and insight. From there, CostPro spread quickly across New Zealand health boards, and today it is used by most regions outside of Auckland, Christchurch and Otago.

In Australia, CBS secured its largest international breakthrough with Queensland Health in 2017. Queensland had kept the legacy mainframe longer than most, but when it finally went out to market CBS’s expertise and pricing won the contract. CostPro is now embedded across one of Australia’s largest state health systems.

The Middle East provided another milestone. Abu Dhabi’s Department of Health, facing spiralling costs, mandated patient costing across both public and private hospitals. CBS rolled out CostPro across the emirate, covering 90 percent of the market. In just the past six months, seven new providers have come on board. “Once clients see the insight CostPro provides, they can’t imagine operating without it,” Wilson says.

Beyond Costing: Capturing Revenue with ChargePro

Alongside CostPro, CBS has developed complementary tools such as ChargePro. While CostPro focuses on costs and efficiency, ChargePro addresses the revenue side - ensuring hospitals capture every dollar they are entitled to.

Hospital billing is often fragmented and reliant on manual processes, especially when it comes to claiming reimbursements from funders like ACC. ChargePro automates clinical billing, generating accurate invoices and preventing revenue leakage.

At Whanganui Hospital, ChargePro uncovered $1 million in unclaimed ACC revenue through back billing. Wilson estimates that if rolled out nationwide, the tool could recover up to $50 million annually for Health New Zealand. “That’s money that should already be in the system, but without the right tools it’s not,” he says.

Together, CostPro and ChargePro form a comprehensive approach to financial management: one ensuring money is spent efficiently, the other ensuring income is fully captured.

Why Clients Stay

CBS is proud of a track record that few software providers can claim: it has never lost a client. Wilson attributes this to the value delivered. “The insight is so powerful that once hospitals have it, they realise they can’t operate any other way,” he says.

Clients consistently report that CostPro doesn’t just cut costs, it changes culture. By giving managers and clinicians reliable data, it encourages evidence-based decision-making and sparks improvement. Doctors, Wilson notes, are competitive by nature: “When they see their data benchmarked against colleagues, they want to do better.”

Looking Ahead

With strong footholds in New Zealand, Australia and Abu Dhabi, CBS is now exploring opportunities in Canada and Asia. At a recent Canadian conference, Wilson noted that only 60 of the country’s 600 hospitals currently use patient costing - a gap that represents significant growth potential.

Closer to home, CBS is also encouraging private providers in New Zealand to consider the benefits of CostPro. While historically used by public hospitals, the tool is equally applicable to private clinics, day surgeries and specialist practices that want greater financial clarity.

“We’ve shown what CostPro can do in big health systems,” Wilson says. “The same principles apply in smaller organisations. If they want to understand your costs, forecast your future, and make every dollar work harder, we’d love to talk.”

The Future of Efficient Healthcare

Healthcare costs are unlikely to fall, but with the right tools, hospitals and clinics can manage them better, says Wilson.

“Health systems don’t need more complexity - they need clarity. CostPro gives leaders the visibility to make decisions with confidence, and that’s what drives efficiency.”

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