Why do they say “it costs the hospital to use the machine” when the hospital owns the machine?

Question

It always confused me. A hospital has an MRI or some other machine, and you hear they try to use it as little as possible to cut costs, because it costs them this or that amount per usage. But why would that be if they own it?

In: 379

Answer 1

Advanced machines have service contracts that prescribe a certain number of uses. Hell, most offices have service contracts for their large printers and they pay per page in so much is they buy blocks of prints (i.e. your service contract covers 1-50,000 prints, after that you have to buy another block.).