The largest expenditure in the US hospitals is on personnel. This includes take home pay and other closely related benefits. A case study conducted by governmorates of Alexandria, Suez, Bani Suef general hospital. 51% of the general expenses were on personnel. This included intermediate and final services, which took 89% of the personnel cost) another 69% went to nurses and physicians salaries while the remaining 31% was taken by other members of the staff. There was also a 16% of the general income that was spent on drugs and medical supplies. This not only included consumed drugs but also wasted and donated drugs.
The average drug cost was relatively low and this included prescription drugs bought by patients from their own pockets. About 7% of the annual total drugs were consumed by renal dialysis unit. A good example of how inappropriate the statistics reported is by the fact that medical supplies account for about 0. 7% of treatments while on the contrary they constitute 57% of expenditures. The actual cost of renal dialysis is part of projects funded by MOHP not forgetting its high costs. Patients require like 2 days visits that is 104 visits per year with an approximated or 6 hours a day.
The average of admission will depend on the specific hospital one is admitted in for example in public hospitals one may pay less but for private some go as high as $500 per day; for gynecology and obstetric department some will go to $1000 and above. In their study Alexandria noticed that some departments were staffed with 2. 49 staff for every bed occupied. The average rate of occupation is however less than 50% due to the increase in admission costs. As a result, the costs per day and the entire hospitals turnover are going to levels as low as $10,000 due to low admission rates and high input costs.
After the Medicare ruling, burger noted that hospitals had made profits an of aggregate $22. 6 billion by 2003 and $26. 3 million in 2004 but on the contrary the number of uninsured had gone up to 46 million. Also in his findings the report lists top 100 expensive hospitals the 10 expensive hospitals were owned by the state and 40 others that charged expensive room services were privately owned. High charges were linked with hospital chains and big hospitals. 89 of 100 hospitals were system affiliated in comparison to 30 of the remaining 100 which could be termed as least expensive.
Drugs, medical supply and room service the 40 hospitals charged 2, 319%, 5,090% and 1,073% of the cost. Other related findings included HMOs which had made $10. 8 billion in profits. The aggregate profits for the entire American hospitals were $26. 3 billion by the year 2004. As he gave his general view, burger felt that “No amount of market tinkering can resource the healthcare crisis. All sectors drive up costs, reducing access to care and quality. Only fundamental changes, a universal system based on a single standard of care for all, will end this various spiral and produce a “humane system that works for Americans” (Burger 2005).