Stundensatzkalkulation

A Stundensatzkalkulation works out what one hour of pharmacy time actually costs, which is the number an appointment has to earn back before anything is left over. The starting point is not the wage, because the loaded cost of an hour is built in three steps:

1. Begin with the gross pay of the person who carries out the appointment.
2. Add the employer social contributions that apply to that salary.
3. Divide by the hours actually available rather than the hours in the contract, because holiday, public holidays, sickness and training are all paid without being productive.

The same gross salary therefore produces a materially higher hourly cost than the payslip suggests, which is why the Personalkostenquote is read against Rohertrag, and why Umsatz je Mitarbeiter is a blunt instrument for this particular question.

The second half of the calculation is the minutes. An appointment is habitually costed at the length of the procedure, which is the shortest part of it, so the honest count has to include everything else:

• The booking and the reminder take staff time before anybody arrives.
• Preparing the room and the materials happens before the procedure starts.
• The conversation before and after the procedure belongs in the count.
• Documentation and labelling take minutes that nobody usually measures.
• Packing the sample and handing it to the courier takes further minutes.
• Handling the result when it comes back is the last part of the appointment.

Ten productive minutes can easily be part of thirty five paid ones. Multiplying the true minute count by the loaded hourly cost gives the labour cost of one appointment, and that is the figure that belongs in every other calculation the pharmacy makes about the service.

Two regulated fees are useful as reference points, because they price pharmacy time in public. The pharmaceutical service officially called Standardisierte Risikoerfassung hoher Blutdruck is remunerated at 11,20 euro net, a figure set by negotiation between the payers and the pharmacy side and open to renegotiation. The pharmacy vaccination fee rises to 11,00 euro from September 2026, up from 10,68 euro, and it is likewise a negotiated rate that will be reopened. The mechanics of the second one are set out under Impfhonorar, and neither fee is a guide to what any other service should cost.

The inputs are the pharmacy's own, which means gross salaries, the contribution rates that apply to it, its real available hours and an honest stopwatch on a handful of appointments. Once the labour cost per appointment is known, the Preisuntergrenze uses it directly as the lowest price the service can be sold at.