Since the 1970 the hospital industry in Korea has been expanding rapidly along with the rapid econo mic growth and the increasing medical care demand. Many of the existing hospitals have expanded their sizes and modernized their facilities and equipments, and many new modern hospitals have been constructed. New automated, sophisticated and costly equipments have occupied the large portion of the, investment put into the hospital industry.
Nobody denies that such costly equipment improves the quality of medical care through fast and accurate diagnosis. The sophisticated equipment, however, is very costly and requires additional facilities and highly trained manpower and has become one of the most important cost-pushing factors leading to financial difficulties of many hospitals. It is strongly felt that some guidelines should be developed to make a decision for the investment. The hospitals, however, do not have enough information to make an important decision on the investment of new, costly and sophisticated equipments.
This study was conducted to provide a set of information derived from profitability analysis and break-even analysis for the decision of the investment of hospital to those equipments.
The automatic blood cell counter of various types were selected and the study was performed by two-step analysis.
On the first step, a 250-bed hospital and SP2 blood cell counter model was selected for the analysis and then profitability and break-even point of the cell counter were calculated.
The revenue and cost occured by the operation of SP2 model were W55, 402, 872 and w60, 046, 071 respectively, with loss of W4,643,199 during the year. The break-even point was W60,060, 031. For the 500-bed hospital under the same circumstance, the break-even point shifts to W79, 941, 147 with net profit of W31, 281, 567 as 28.2% net profit ratio.
On the second step, six hospitals of different sizes (100-bed, 200-bed, 400-bed, 600-bed, 800-bed, and 1,200-bed) and five different types of cell counters of different prices (Z model: US$ 12,500, S5 mccel: US $ 22, CCO, SST model: US $ 50, CCO, M mceel: US $ 9C, C00, SP4 mccel: US $105, 000) were chosen as analytical models. The prcfitabilities of the cross-matched combination among hospitals and cell counters were also calculated.
The adequate models for different hospitals in size which show the net profit ratio more than 200,0 were 100-200beds: Z model, 200-400beds: S5 or SST models, 600-8CObeds: SP2 model, 800 beds upward: SP4 model.
However, to make a final decision, the functional eb;ectives of the hospital such as quality of medical care, education and research components etfer than prof itabilityzshculd fully be considered.
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