If you can do more outpatient work, you can reduce the bed count, the cost of having a patient taking up a bed in a hospital is very high, even if they are as c

If you can do more outpatient work, you can reduce the bed count, the cost of having a patient taking up a bed in a hospital is very high, even if they are as close to perfect health as possible and are just waiting to be discharged. This is money that could employ another doctor or buy another piece of health-giving equipment. The sooner you can kick a patient out of hospital, the sooner they become someone else's problem, coming out of someone else's budget. In a publicly-funded system, the local authority may pay for in-home care visits and the patient's GP may be responsible for post-hospital outcomes. Stupid PFI deals can mean that the cost-per-bed is ludicrous, and that money that could be going towards patient care is being funnelled to failing companies like Carillion. In an insurance-funded system, the relationship between costs and fees comes down to negotiation between the hospitals and the insurance companies, rather than from the hospital simply coming up with the fees and the insurance companies paying them. This may mean that the income per-bed-per-night is less than it costs, whilst the income per procedure is higher than it costs. Even if the hospital is still responsible for post-discharge care, they may be able to make more profit out of expensive home visits by low-paid carers than in-ward rounds by higher-paid nurses.