The care-giving process in a hospital cannot be accomplished without the precise procuring medical equipment applicable to the delivered service. It is one of the most elementary necessities of a hospital irrespective of the hospital type, size and speciality.

Furthermore, there are no two ways that the hospital medical equipment cost forms a major and unavoidable component of the total ‘Cost Of Project’. This can make or break the feasibility of a project and thus clearly emphasizes the need for a professional and systematic approach for hospital equipment planning and costing.

Traditionally, in the initial stage, hospital equipment costing is estimated as a percentage of the total cost of the hospital project. However, this method is no way fool-proof and a detailed list of medical devices to be procured would have to be generated. This would be greatly impacted by factors such as the type of hospital, level of medical technology, clinical specialties, patients to be serviced, etc.

Key cost factors 

The level of clinical specialization and the level of medical technology are two primary decisive factors while estimating the hospital equipment costs. The hospital equipment costing would increase significantly for institutions offering super-specialties like cardiac surgery, neuro surgery, nuclear medicine, etc. The same applies to the level of medical technology proposed for the hospital. One needs to secure a fine balance between use of state-of-the-art medical technology and its cost. For instance, a 128 slice CT scanner may cost 50 – 55% more than its 32 slice counter-part.

Furthermore, just as the hospital equipment costing in India is different from that in the West, the costing for Mumbai may vary from the costing for Bengaluru owing to factors such as cost of delivery, octroi, state taxes, etc. as they vary significantly across the country. This scenario is however, likely to change once GST gets fully implemented.

The more detailed approach

A more detailed method of undertaking the hospital equipment costing that very few in the industry follow, is estimating the exact type, quantities and costs of all the medical equipment required for a particular hospital. This list should include all the required medical equipment right from Operating tables to X-ray viewers with their quantities. This list can be organized either department-wise or speciality-wise.

At Technecon Healthcare, we use this comprehensive approach to prepare the hospital equipment costing. This ensures that the costing includes all the key items with their required number of units with their prevalent cost applicable to the respective geographical location.