§ Mr. John Browneasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will provide the detailed basis of calculation for calculating the capital depreciation element included in the paybed charges for each class of hospital.
§ Mr. NewtonThe factor used to represent capital depreciation was built up in several stages. The starting104W point is the annuitised building, engineering and equipment replacement costs of a typical 450 bed hospital in the mainly acute category. The sum of these annuitised costs are adjusted for in-patient balance and bed occupancy, and reduced to a cost per patient day. Vehicle replacement costs are derived separately, expressed as a daily cost per patient, and added in.
105WThe capital depreciation cost per patient day for hospitals in other charging classes is extrapolated by weighting the unit cost for hospitals in the mainly acute category. The sum of daily capital depreciation costs for all hospitals is then expressed as a percentage of the sum of their daily revenue costs. The resulting figure—18.9 per cent.—was included in paybed charges for 1985–86 and 1986–87.