Practice and hospital economics.

There has been a significant effort over the past 10 years to attempt to control the rate of increase in the cost of medical care. However, as is true of any economic system, there are multiple stakeholders involved and often competing motivations. The single largest source of medical inflation is the cost of pharmaceuticals; however, this topic is not directly discussed in this article Similarly, the cost of medical insurance products is not included as these issues cannot be directly addressed by physician behavior. The body of this discussion focuses on costs directly experienced by or potentially controlled by physicians. These areas include practice expense and margin and hospital direct costs and margin. It is essential for physicians to understand fully factors they can potentially control and areas they may be able to influence in this troubling era of cost containment.