What The NHS Pays to Keep You in a Hospital Bed
The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is integral to our health. Love or loathe it: you wouldn’t want to be in a country without it.
Do you know how much it costs to keep one patient in a hospital bed?
Read on to find out.
Costs of Diagnosis and Medical Tests
After stepping into a hospital, your journey will most likely start with a doctor diagnosing you. That may require many medical tests, like blood tests, x-rays, CT scans, or MRIs. The prices can vary greatly depending on how complex they are. One example is that simple blood tests could be around £50, while more complex ones, such as MRIs, could go over £1,000.
Specialist Consultations and Referrals
After diagnosis, you might go elsewhere to see someone else who does that kind of medicine. A specialist visit, for example, in cardiology or neurology, may cost more than a GP for the consultation fee. An average specialist consultation costs the NHS about £200 per case. It’s more expensive if they’re working a Locum shift.
The Cost of Operations
Surgeries are some of the most substantial expenditures incurred by the NHS. Depending on how complicated it is, surgery can have various prices varying with procedure times, ranging from tens of thousands of pounds for particularly elaborate heart surgeries to just several thousand pounds, like a simple appendectomy.
Still, there are ways the NHS saves money. Investing in high-quality medical devices like a surgery retractor, sutures, gloves, and anaesthesia also adds to the costs. That doesn’t mean they don’t all combine to make surgeries one of the most expensive parts of hospital care.
The Price of Hospital Stays
When you sleep overnight in a hospital bed, the NHS pays a significant amount of money. The average rate at which it costs per night stands at £483. This price consists of nursing care, meals, and running costs for the hospital. You might not think it’s a lot, but there’s a shortage of hospital beds, meaning the hospital is full of patients. Multiply £483 by thousands (depending on the hospital size), and the expenditure is insane.
The length of stay depends on the patient’s health condition and the kind of treatment they receive. Patients who have just had major operations might need extended stays, raising overall prices accordingly.
Medicines and Continuing Treatment
Another aspect of high expenses is medications. Various types, like cheap painkillers or very expensive cancer drugs, are provided through the NHS. Most basic painkillers can be supplied to the NHS at around £1.50 monthly, but it costs the NHS £80 million annually, while advanced forms of cancer treatment may go beyond £10,000 in one month.
And there are prescriptions – for which most people take liberties. For example, you can buy paracetamol and ibuprofen in the supermarkets, not even over the counter, yet people are using the NHS and expensive prescriptions.
The costs of maintaining a patient in a hospital bed are massive and varied. Though the NHS aims at providing affordable healthcare, understanding its economic burden emphasises the significance of cost-effective resource allocation and long-term funding to guarantee its future success.