Outside of industry, oxygen’s main commercial use is medical. Odd as it seems to label medical oxygen use commercial, every breath supplemented by oxygen, whether in an ambulance, in an emergency room, on a ward, in labor and delivery, in an operating room or recovery room, in an intensive care unit, or as home oxygen therapy, a financial cost is incurred.
The infrastructure required to support medical oxygen use is elaborate, varied, complicated, and often taken for granted. Medical oxygen, like water in a hospital or clinic, is expected to be readily available, free flowing, and cheap. Rarely is cost consideration a factor in oxygen use decisions.
On a per dose basis oxygen is inexpensive. However, the total number of “oxygen doses” administered plus the personnel and equipment required to administer and monitor it make oxygen a costly drug for hospitals in the aggregate. Rarely is the cost of respiratory therapy services or pulse oximetry or blood gas analysis or oxygen sensor maintenance considered when the total cost of medical oxygen supplementation is assessed.
Surprisingly, it is difficult to get cost data about medical oxygen. It is supplied under contracts that are specific to institutions. As contracts may contain proprietary information, cost accounting estimates hard to calculate. Perhaps a future post will provide more information as it becomes available.
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