Hospital financial audit of medical equipment maintenance: a case study

Abstract

Maintenance expense is becoming an area of importance in the business of health care. Methods for identification and determination of both types and amounts of expenses have also become important. This paper is a case study of one institution's total medical equipment maintenance expense, during the 1985/86 fiscal year. During this time, the total hospital medical maintenance expense was $683,614: of which $238,008 (34.8%) was salary; $85,858 (12.6%) was parts; $77,083 (11.3%) was contracts; $48,230 (7.1%) was service; $123,572 (18.1%) was X-ray tubes; $91,260 (13.3%) was maintenance insurance; $14,479 (2.1%) was for training; $1,212 (0.2%) was for operating expenses; and $3,912 (0.6%) was the 10-year amortized test-equipment expense. The maintenance-expense/acquisition-cost ratio was 4.36%. Arguments are presented on the need to obtain expense data that have some comparative value to other institutions and on developing benchmarks to be utilized in evaluating acceptable levels of expense.