Impossible to make money consistently...?

[Chester]

I'm on Campaign 2 and after hours of gruel I finally managed to get the "make profit for 1 day in a row" objective, and immediately after came the "now make profit for 3 days in a row" objective... (creative huh!), but i'm finding it impossible to make money consistently!

First off, the daily limitations on how many patients come into the hospital is pretty restrictive, especially for the wallet, when my hospital could handle alot more patients, the game just won't let me have them.

Second, i'm running the hospital at minimum staff amounts to keep wage costs down. Not a skeleton crew, so the hospital is running as it should without any major problems functionally, but I certainly can't reduce staff levels any further to reduce costs, it just won't work.

Thirdly, i'm making money sure, but not enough... It's so random from day to day. On a good day I can release 2-3 healthy patients with a bill of $2-3000 each, great! And on those days I make a profit... But the day after I get 1 or even no big insurance payouts and end up losing money because the $120's from the emergency clinic just aren't enough to break even.

So what am I doing wrong? As far as I can see it's totally dependent on what kinds of patients I get and when they just happen to be fixed up and ready for release, which is all totally out of my control.

What are your thoughts?

Regards,
Highscoreosaurs

[Horst Marines]

sell everyday for 3 days a bit from ur equip for bit profit.... :)

[Chester]

Originally posted by Horstspital:

sell everyday for 3 days a bit from ur equip for bit profit.... :)

Does that really work? lol I may have to if I can't find a better way of doing whatever it is i'm doing wrong

[Horst Marines]

it works but its a lame way .but the missions later are hard enough ^^

[Lailonn]

Patients limit and economy indeed need some balance/rework.

[ttv.MyNameIsNeo7]

For anyone doing the campaign and need "X profit for N number of days", some [slightly unethical] advice:

Focus on Surgery: General Surgery, Internal, Ortho, etc., make far more money than Emergency. Make sure they are fully staffed, and if you have enough patients sent per day, make sure you have surgery staff at night. Make sure most of your labs and tech rooms have at least one staff member at night too (they don't need to be the most skilled either). This way you're always treating patients that insurance pays the most for.

Stop your ambulances: Click the ambulance button on the bottom left of the screen, then click the hand (stop) icon for all of your ambulances. Seriously. Ambulances send you cases that take the most time, staff, money, and do not have large payouts unless surgery is required later. If the daily maintenance costs are too high, sell them.

Reduce Emergency/Trauma Staff: Reduce the amount of wages you're paying on staff that aren't doing anything by firing or reassigning people. For Emergency, if your doctors are able to go through all of the days patients several hours before the clinic hours end, you have too many. For trauma, keep the bare minimum of staff unless your wards are always full. I will usually do 1 doctor and 2 or 3 nurses if possible; or 2 doctors and a few more nurses (depending on shifts).

Close the ICU: ICU does not make any money directly, especially when there are no patients to monitor [because you stopped your ambulances, right?]. Just close it-- send collapsed patients and other urgent cases to another hospital. It will save you loads of money. If you don't want to close it, at least reduce to minimum staff.


Other notes:
I also tend to set my surgery departments to high certainty to reduce the chances of unnecessary surgery penalties ($20k down the drain), but you can also help reduce the chance of these penalties by using more experienced staff at the cost of increased wages. With high certainty, your patient "throughput" will be lower, but if you have enough offices, it can benefit you more.

Make sure all departments (where applicable) have receptionists to speed up diagnosis as well. They will sometimes have symptoms found for your doctors and assign them by priority, which reduces the amount of tests and time required to get a patient in and out. Most of the time one will do, but if the number of patients is high enough, two or more can be useful.

NURSES, LABS, STRETCHERS, and EQUIPMENT: This is a somewhat minor/overlooked detail, but I see a lot of threads about confused players. Your hospital cannot make money if you cannot accept, treat, and release patients quickly. This means keeping patient waits to a minimum. If your doctors are always busy with current patients, they can't see others. If your nurses are all busy moving patients, your doctors will have nothing to do. If your doctors and nurses are both playing games and you still have patients, make sure you have stretchers to transport them, and make sure you have enough labs and free techs on the shift to perform procedures, and make sure your labs all necessary equipment. It's all a balancing act-- and sometimes you need to pause the game, inspect your patients and see what procedures they're waiting on...is there a doctor/nurse/lab/equipment/tech missing or busy?


These strategies are mostly recommended for doing the campaign challenges to get them over with easily and quickly. They will not win you awards with your patients or doctors, but the impact isn't terrible, at least in my games. You can mix and match these suggestions in sandbox as well if you need to make more money without borrowing or if you need to repay the bank. It's not terribly difficult to make money in this game, but if you focus on it, then other parts of your game may be neglected.

[Kosmozuikis]

It's hard but i managed to get 3-5k consistently. Fire expensive staff, hire residents, only have one specialist. Fire most staff working at night. Keep your hospitalization working, it nets you a lot of money. See the workload, i biult 3 additional doctors offices because existing one weren't enough.

[wiarumas]

I forget if the campaign 2 is the "inefficiency" mission, but its because the layout is bad and set up to fail. The mission will play itself and get you to 3 days profit without doing much, but to get 3 days profit you will need to make changes to the layout.

Without spoiling it too much, you can start by moving trauma centers closer to the ambulance drop off... 2nd floor and far from the elevator is too far.

[Chester]

Thanks for the tips, guys! Definately going to give them a go, and yes @wiarumas it is the "inefficiency" mission, I see you remember it!