Hospital revenue and profit

[GCVos]

Do you guys have any tips on making your hospitals more profitable? It seems every level I play, once I reach ~level 21, my expenses go beyond my revenue. Could it be because I'm promoting my staff, they become more expensive, but I'm not getting more revenue out of it? It's weird because my hospitals are very profitable midgame (50k-80k profit p/m), but I end up losing money when I get close to filling the whole map (10k loss p/m). I actually went bankrupt on Flottering, but only after 40 years when I had completely filled the level. Lower Bullocks is still extremely profitable for me, but I never went beyond level 19 there.

[Suzaku]

Assuming everything is going well, all I can think of is to use marketing to get more people with expensive illnesses to visit.

[GCVos]

I haven't unlocked marketing yet I think...

[Suzaku]

Ah, then I would continue in the game and unlock more things.

It might also just be a case of "you can't make more money because you literally can't do better". At that point, your only option would be to cut down on unnecessary expenses, like unneeded staff.

[GCVos]

Cool, I'll do that then, I was getting worried it's better not to expand once you beat the map.

[Fringehunter7719]

Overpromoting staff is a real possibility, a decent size (say 4x4) GP room full of medicine cabinets (about 30) with a rank 1 or rank 2 doctor costs about a third to half the amount of a GP room with a rank 5 doctor per month and basically does the same thing at the same speed. You also make more money per patient if GPs send patients to expensive diagnosis rooms (particularly mega scans) instead of cheap ones, or straight to treatment. Less is often more, so long as you can keep up with patient inflows.

There's normally plenty of slack for putting prices up as well, I still haven't worked out exactly how it works, but +30% often doesn't trash rep (price rep doesn't matter, just overall rep) and +100% doesn't on a number of the early levels I checked it on.

[antonysimpson]

I have the same issue. Always go bankcrupt on Mitton University.

[Fringehunter7719]

Isn't Mitton one of the ones that tolerates prices +100% on everything?

[GCVos]

@Fringehunter: That's what I was starting to think too. I guess there's enough difference in staff pay between a 2 or 3 rank GP doc and one fully trained to 5, I might want to experiment with doing only 3-4 trainings.

Does price reputation not have any effect on hapiness or how many patients the game spawns? I did get one or two patients complaining they didn't want to pay an increased price (don't remember the percentage). But it wasn't on Mitton, it was one of the earlier maps.

[snuggleform]

The big things you can do are raising prices and using marketing to attract illnesses which you can diagnose/treat efficiently. If you're into micromanagement and are detail oriented, you can also hire cheap staff with 0 or 1 qualifications and as you promote them, never give them a pay raise (slide the bar all the way to the left on the promotion screen). They will be unhappy, but if you know what you're doing you can keep them happy with environmental bonuses which are one time costs rather than salary which is recurring cost. You can cut your salary costs by about half if you do something like this (blank doctors are roughly 17k, if you just click promote and let the game decide their raise they go up to like 30+k by rank 5 training, but you can suppress their pay to their base pay if you give them 0 raise).

Raising prices is recommended only when your reputation is maxed out (at this point, you're getting the maximum patient influx for maximum revenue, so you can only improve revenue by getting more dollars per patient by raising prices).

[GCVos]

Thanks for the detailed comments all, this is very helpful! Yeah, I am definitely into micromanaging and prefer hiring untrained staff and assign them to specific rooms with specific training. I'm now paying staff just enough so their morale is still okay, and not going all out to rank 5 training, but sticking to 3-4. Results so far are much better, my expenses are much lower :)

[snuggleform]

I have some more refinements to add. I replayed the game from a new save file and got 3 stars in all hospitals again, this time much more efficiently especially on the ones that require hospital value.

The funny thing is, you really don't need marketing (unless the level objective requires it) illnesses.

One thing I realized is that you really should as a general rule of thumb raise all your treatment prices to the max (+100%) immediately and permanently. Patients don't randomly refuse the price as you might guess, they instead seem to only refuse if they are unhappy enough when they get treated. In the early game you can gain a frightening amount of momentum by immediately doubling every treatment cost (remember every time you "discover" a new illness you have to go to the price menu and raise the new one you discovered). Especially early in the game patients aren't waiting around long enough and don't have complicated illnesses so they're making it to your pharmacy or ward plenty happy and you getting 10-12k per patient instead of 5-6k gives you a vast advantage which you can turn into training staff and upgrading equipment to anticipate more patients with a variety of illnesses.

And as crazy as it sounds, I reduce all diagnostic costs by the max (-80%). Why? I noticed after playing a while that whenever a patient is diagnosed in gp or cardio or whatever, they get a happiness modifier that depends on your diagnostician's happiness and also the price level. The lower the price the more happiness boost they get on a diagnostic visit. You may decide not to cut the prices that much, but certainly don't increase diagnostic costs. You'll notice that you might make some short term profit but then you will have a huge % of patients rage quitting because they actually get -% happiness on diagnostic visits when you charge too much, meaning they don't get to the treatment phase and you're not making revenue anymore!

Patient happiness is key as if you want to get the max money out of them, they have to be happy enough when they arrive at the treatment stage. And because diagnostics is the tangled path that leads to treatment, it behooves you to pay some attention to the diagnostic workflow. Also, the amount of cash you get from each patient vastly comes from treatment, so you don't "lose" as much as you think by going down 80% on diagnosis, when you're pulling in money head over heals on doubled treatment costs.

And also it's been noted before, but any time you promote someone, slide that bar until it's barely yellow. The baseline recommendation is significantly more than the what is actually required to keep them happy. The same is true whenever someone feels underpaid. You can usually slide their bar just an inch and save a lot of money this way instead of pressing the mindless "satisfy all pay requests" which incurs you more costs than necessary.

Other than that, make sure you're keeping an eye on constantly getting more and better diagnosis rooms, upgrading equipment, make your diagnostic rooms prestige 5, add some gps of course when necessary, make new treatment rooms to respond to new illnesses. It's actually a fairly natural process that you get better at. Train about 3 psychs early on is not a bad idea; they count as a diagnostic option and they are annoying/difficult to train later on. You don't need "gp aces" as much as everyone likes to harp on. I actually think there's a huge advantage to having bedside manners on all diagnosticians since it gives about +15% happiness boost on a patient visit, which again helps them accept the doubled treatment cost when they reach the treatment room. It helps to think ahead a bit, if you know your level requires dna labs, you might want to think about training some basic genetic doctors after your psychs are done. Honest to goodness, training some gp skill ok but it's hardly necessary as everyone and their mum keeps trying to tell you to fully specialize a lot of gps. Later on I actually needed a ton of radiology specs to keep up with the mega scanners.

Right now I just reached 3 stars and a rank 28 hospital on the last mission. My highest GP is rank 3. Does that surprise you? I had a "problem" midgame where my gps were getting overrun, but I went back to the basics and untangled it - added higher diagnostic rooms, hired more doctors even if not the right spec, put receptions/gps close to where the patients come in. Right now I have no long wait queues anywhere not even the GPS, making 450k a month with 250k in expenses. I reached 17 mil hospital value when I finally completed the 1000 patients cured requirement, so I always beat the hospital value EASILY and quickly and efficiently, where in the past I used to struggle on this and take years to creep up and barely reach the minimum.

[Suzaku]

Originally posted by wsc150:

... so you don't "lose" as much as you think by going down 80% on diagnosis, when you're pulling in money head over heals on doubled treatment costs.

Interesting. I'll have to try this next time I play.

Also, I'm not sure if this line has an honest spelling error, or a very clever pun.

[pikarie]

Originally posted by wsc150:

I have some more refinements to add. I replayed the game from a new save file and got 3 stars in all hospitals again, this time much more efficiently especially on the ones that require hospital value.

The funny thing is, you really don't need marketing (unless the level objective requires it) illnesses.

One thing I realized is that you really should as a general rule of thumb raise all your treatment prices to the max (+100%) immediately and permanently. Patients don't randomly refuse the price as you might guess, they instead seem to only refuse if they are unhappy enough when they get treated. In the early game you can gain a frightening amount of momentum by immediately doubling every treatment cost (remember every time you "discover" a new illness you have to go to the price menu and raise the new one you discovered). Especially early in the game patients aren't waiting around long enough and don't have complicated illnesses so they're making it to your pharmacy or ward plenty happy and you getting 10-12k per patient instead of 5-6k gives you a vast advantage which you can turn into training staff and upgrading equipment to anticipate more patients with a variety of illnesses.

And as crazy as it sounds, I reduce all diagnostic costs by the max (-80%). Why? I noticed after playing a while that whenever a patient is diagnosed in gp or cardio or whatever, they get a happiness modifier that depends on your diagnostician's happiness and also the price level. The lower the price the more happiness boost they get on a diagnostic visit. You may decide not to cut the prices that much, but certainly don't increase diagnostic costs. You'll notice that you might make some short term profit but then you will have a huge % of patients rage quitting because they actually get -% happiness on diagnostic visits when you charge too much, meaning they don't get to the treatment phase and you're not making revenue anymore!

Patient happiness is key as if you want to get the max money out of them, they have to be happy enough when they arrive at the treatment stage. And because diagnostics is the tangled path that leads to treatment, it behooves you to pay some attention to the diagnostic workflow. Also, the amount of cash you get from each patient vastly comes from treatment, so you don't "lose" as much as you think by going down 80% on diagnosis, when you're pulling in money head over heals on doubled treatment costs.

And also it's been noted before, but any time you promote someone, slide that bar until it's barely yellow. The baseline recommendation is significantly more than the what is actually required to keep them happy. The same is true whenever someone feels underpaid. You can usually slide their bar just an inch and save a lot of money this way instead of pressing the mindless "satisfy all pay requests" which incurs you more costs than necessary.

Other than that, make sure you're keeping an eye on constantly getting more and better diagnosis rooms, upgrading equipment, make your diagnostic rooms prestige 5, add some gps of course when necessary, make new treatment rooms to respond to new illnesses. It's actually a fairly natural process that you get better at. Train about 3 psychs early on is not a bad idea; they count as a diagnostic option and they are annoying/difficult to train later on. You don't need "gp aces" as much as everyone likes to harp on. I actually think there's a huge advantage to having bedside manners on all diagnosticians since it gives about +15% happiness boost on a patient visit, which again helps them accept the doubled treatment cost when they reach the treatment room. It helps to think ahead a bit, if you know your level requires dna labs, you might want to think about training some basic genetic doctors after your psychs are done. Honest to goodness, training some gp skill ok but it's hardly necessary as everyone and their mum keeps trying to tell you to fully specialize a lot of gps. Later on I actually needed a ton of radiology specs to keep up with the mega scanners.

Right now I just reached 3 stars and a rank 28 hospital on the last mission. My highest GP is rank 3. Does that surprise you? I had a "problem" midgame where my gps were getting overrun, but I went back to the basics and untangled it - added higher diagnostic rooms, hired more doctors even if not the right spec, put receptions/gps close to where the patients come in. Right now I have no long wait queues anywhere not even the GPS, making 450k a month with 250k in expenses. I reached 17 mil hospital value when I finally completed the 1000 patients cured requirement, so I always beat the hospital value EASILY and quickly and efficiently, where in the past I used to struggle on this and take years to creep up and barely reach the minimum.

Thanks you so much for your tips on the last level! I can't seem to get past level 25, I will try your tactics about reducing diagnostic cost and raising treatment cost =)

[snuggleform]

On the last level especially as you hit higher hospital ranks like 25, I have one more piece of advice: aim to get 6 psych rooms and 6 dna labs. Those rooms tend to be a huge holdup as patient volume increases; I believe it's because they serve as both diagnostic and treatment that they get big queues, whereas my 4'ish megascanners and 6'ish xrays have almost zero queue. Be diligent and train genetics/psych doctors a little bit ahead of time.

[Anders]

Originally posted by wsc150:

On the last level especially as you hit higher hospital ranks like 25, I have one more piece of advice: aim to get 6 psych rooms and 6 dna labs. Those rooms tend to be a huge holdup as patient volume increases; I believe it's because they serve as both diagnostic and treatment that they get big queues, whereas my 4'ish megascanners and 6'ish xrays have almost zero queue. Be diligent and train genetics/psych doctors a little bit ahead of time.

Hope i'm not asking for too much, but would you mind linking for screenshot(s) of your rank 28 last level hospital, it seems you play it very different from me, and i'm curious to see how it looks? :)