Can you explain why one ICU room costs millions, and why they cost 10k a day even if no one is in them? Neither makes sense to me. I can imagine say 100k in monitoring equipment in a room.
Maybe it's the hospital inflation applied to equipment?
Maybe it's the hospital inflation applied to equipment?
The reason they cost so much even if no one is in them is because of what a "bed" means. It isn't the literal bed, it is a unit a treatable/treating capacity. Requiements vary somewhat by jurisdiction but it's going to mean 24/7/365 nursing and attending doctor staff. You can't just call them in when a patient shows up, they need to be scheduled and available. Then ICUs will also need a large cadre of oncall specialists, neurologists, cardiac, laboratory testing staff, and on an on to cover a huge range of possible patient needs. Stocked blood units, stocked medicine units. All those things have costs whether a patient in in the bed or not. Hospitals to a large extent spend an incredible amount of money on capacity. No wants wants to end up in a hospital to have them say, "oops, we didn't expect your spleen to rupture today, Dr. Bob won't be in till next tuesday so you are out of luck, sorry"
In case it was unclear, I was being sarcastic in my reply and pointing out the hypocrisy of being offended that "regular people" would have to foot the bill for ICUs - as if they weren't the ones relying on their existence.
Radiology generally needs to have a CT ready to go when there is an ICU. It likely needs an MR too, and staff for running after hours. Portable X-ray and ultrasound, a PACS, a RIS, services contracts and a load of other smaller costs.
That’s several million in hardware costs.
The running cost is huge with MR service contracts alone into the hundreds of thousands per year.
Staffing utterly dwarfs that expense and getting skilled people to work out of hours requires a lot of money, and additional cover for when they sleep.
Staff need to be kept competent with courses and training, certificates and leave to get to these sessions. More money.
The consumables are silly expensive and expire fairly rapidly. Everything needs to be available and a few spares should be present.
Radiology can be a cash cow for day to day operations in a private clinic. But having staffing and equipment that can run 24 hours a day with 100% uptime is a massive cost multiplier.