OBJECTIVES: The rational use of resources is essential for granting sustainability at any healthcare system. This study aims to evaluate the best anti-inflamatory medication regarding costs consumption from private payer’s perspective. METHODS: 400 medical charts from 3 private hospitals in Curitiba city were accessed retrospectively from November to April (2010) and selected based on the use of intravenous ketoprophene (200mg/day), ketorolac (60mg/day), parecoxib (40mg/day) or tenoxicam (40mg/day) at the immediate post-operative adult patients from orthopedic surgeries period and based on the existence of hospital’s billing information. One hundred twenty-one cases were recruited. Resource use considered were antacid, antiemetic and analgesic drugs, infusion equipment, medication costs (factory list prices) and labor costs were estimated from the amount of minutes per day to administering the medications. The minimum monthly wage for a nurse according to the Brazilian nurses union was considered (593.75 USD). Costs are expressed in 2010 USD. RESULTS: Parecoxib presented the least daily resource consuming profile with an average of 33.52 USD compared to 68.27; 67.16 and 75.05 USD for ketoprophene, ketorolac and tenoxicam. Daily average expenditure on the consumption of antacid analgesic and antiemetic medications was 6.00, 10.19, 12.43 and 8.50 USD for parecoxib, ketoprophene, ketorolac and tenoxicam (PC/KP/KL/TM) respectively. Total time expenditure per day and costs were 12.5 min (4.96 USD), 26.75 min (10.59 USD), 27.43min (10.85 USD) and 25.20 min (9.97 USD) for PC/KP/KL/TM respectively. Daily savings by using parecoxib were found in 2.53, 13.04 and 7.16 USD against KP/KL/TM, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Parecoxib was found to be the less costly alternative to the hospital by rationing the number of administrations per day, the use of antacid, analgesic and antiemetic medications and the total labor time costs for administering the medications.