|
|
|
I’m a little tired tonight. Aside from the fatigue, my ears are not being nice to me. There’s hissing sound in the background and my hearing is degraded. I’ll set my GP tomorrow and he will hopefully prescribe something for it.
I had my blood test today and the results are posted here. They were unhappy with my hemoglobin count so they gave me a shot of Aranesp. I checked the box the syringe came from to make sure they were giving me what I expected. I now consider myself the final inspector in the QC process.
I was chatting with the nurse the sucked my blood about the machine they use to get their counts. I asked her how much it costs. She said about $100,000. She also volunteered that they lease it with a maintenance contract over five years. Then they get a new machine and start the lease over again.
That got me to thinking. A $100,000 machine over five years is $20,000 a year. Since it’s a lease with a maintenance contract, I’m going to presume the machine costs them $30,000 a year. Now you need a nurse to draw blood and feed and care for the machine. I have no idea what a nurse makes, but let’s presume it cost $150,000 a year to keep a full time nurse on staff.
That means it cost them $180,000 a year to do blood tests.
I asked her how many blood tests they average a day, she said 30 to 50 tests a day. If I take the midpoint of 40 a day, that comes out to a little over 10,000 blood tests a year. That means their out of pocket expense are $18 per blood test.
I have no idea what they charge the insurance company, but my co-pay is $20. That puts them at a $2.00 profit BEFORE the insurance company pays. If they charge the insurance company, $50 for the test multiplied by 10,000 tests a year, that’s a very nice $500,000 profit clean and clear.
That’s very nice little cash cow.
I’m not complaining. Any business has a right to make a profit.
Posted by The Vorlon at April 7, 2006 9:27 PM