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

How do you know the hospital owns the MRI machine? They very likely lease it, meaning they pay for its use. The lease may be tied to the use, not the time. In other words, rather than paying a monthly lease fee, they may be paying by the number of uses or the time it’s on.