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

Machines like MRI’s are extremely expensive to maintain. They have maintenance contracts that can cost $10,000 per month. All medical equipment’s parts are astronomically expensive. Some of the maintenance is based on hours of use, the more they use it the more it costs.