Plain X-ray machines aren't *that* expensive, as medical diagnostic equipment goes. You need a machine (I'd guess at £100K max) which needs to go in a shielded room, a radiographer to run it and a radiologist to read the scans, and secretaries to make appointments and type up the radiologists' reports and send them to GPs/consultants.
The biggies are MRI and PET/CT scanners. The basic scanner costs between 0.7 and 1.5 million pounds, then a hospital has to drop running costs on top of that, and building costs if it is a new installation.
Basic running costs require at least a pair of radiographers (neither can be inexperienced as it's a complex process to image people using one), secretarial support, a consultant radiologist for reporting the results, general overheads (heat, light, phones, letters etc) and probably a manager if there's more than one scanner.
Scanner overheads are things like maintenance contracts, for MRI: helium fills every few months, aircon servicing, machine upgrades and servicing. For PET/CT, again servicing, but also the cost of radioactive isotopes needed (a few hundred a pop).
Buildings aren't cheap either - MRI rooms need to be shielded against stray radio waves and must be on a solid concrete base (they are very heavy!). PET/CT rooms have to be shielded against radioactivity.
The Govt a few years ago had a scheme called 'New Opportunities Fund' which paid for a lot of scanners to give to local district general hospitals. And then the hospitals realised it was a very expensive gift: although they got the scanners, most of the time they had to pick up building and maintenance and operating costs themselves. And they couldn't afford it. So they mothballed the scanners! ::) Others were paid for by the Lottery, but then ran into the same problem.
http://tinyurl.com/2hh89hhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/3606484.stmAnd this is before you even think about *treatment* machines such as radiotherapy linacs. Or even the fact that such machines need to be replaced after 5-7 years and often aren't...
Oh for joined-up thinking!
Don't feel guilty about having plain X-rays Tim... actual costs of an MRI are several hundred.
moonbells (day job is in a place with four, soon to be five modern scanners, where the replacement is by an Appeal and the operating costs are paid for by scan revenues.)
