Hospital management software in India has no honest single price. A quote changes with beds, locations, modules, users, hosting, interfaces, migration, devices, implementation, support, and contract. Public government software and open-source code also carry eligibility or operating costs that a licence column does not show.
The useful answer is a workbook. Collect buyer-entered figures from the quotes, preserve every unit, and calculate year one separately from a normal operating year. Hospital Copilot is demo-priced, so its quote belongs in the same sheet.
Decision summary
- Do not use a national average or an invented facility-size band.
- Keep one-time and recurring costs separate.
- Treat unknown setup, hosting, support, and maintenance rows as unknown, not zero.
- Hospital Copilot has no practice-tier price; it is scoped and priced through a demo.
- Record the hospital quote’s stated tax rate and amount separately.
Normalize scope before price
Send every shortlisted supplier the same scope sheet. A lower number is not useful if it omits wards, interfaces, migration, or support that another quote includes.
| Scope field | Buyer entry |
|---|---|
| Facilities and locations | |
| Licensed beds and operational beds | |
| OPD encounters per day | |
| Admissions and discharges per day | |
| Clinical departments and specialties | |
| Named, concurrent, or role-based users | |
| Registration and patient identity | |
| ADT, wards, beds, nursing, eMAR | |
| CPOE, pharmacy, inventory | |
| LIS, analyzers, RIS, PACS | |
| Billing, packages, deposits, refunds | |
| Payers, TPA, government schemes | |
| Finance, procurement, stores, HR | |
| Existing systems to retain | |
| Data sources and history to migrate | |
| Availability and disaster-recovery target | |
| Implementation locations and sequence |
Write exclusions beside the table. “Pharmacy” may mean a formulary in one quote and stock, batches, expiry, dispensing, returns, purchase, and accounting handoff in another.
The complete cost workbook
| Cost row | Quantity and unit | One-time | Annual recurring | GST status | Evidence and date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core subscription or licence | |||||
| Bed, user, facility, or module increment | |||||
| Discovery and workflow design | |||||
| Configuration and approved customisation | |||||
| Master data preparation | |||||
| Patient and encounter migration | |||||
| Billing, inventory, finance, and document migration | |||||
| Lab analyzers and LIS interface | |||||
| RIS, PACS, and modality interface | |||||
| Pharmacy, payment, payer, TPA, or accounting interface | |||||
| Interface engine, API, VPN, certificate, or message fees | |||||
| Hosting, database, storage, backup, and recovery | |||||
| Servers, network, power, kiosks, printers, scanners | |||||
| Security testing, logging, and monitoring | |||||
| Training, super-users, and floor support | |||||
| Project management and go-live | |||||
| Support SLA and after-hours escalation | |||||
| Updates, major releases, and regression testing | |||||
| SMS, WhatsApp, email, payment, and other usage | |||||
| Internal clinical and operational labour | |||||
| Internal IT, finance, quality, and legal labour | |||||
| Downtime and dual-running allowance | |||||
| Data export, archive, termination, and transition | |||||
| GST and other applicable tax |
Require a named owner and source for each row. A blank remains a commercial question. It must not silently become ₹0 in the total.
Calculate two totals
Year-one total = quoted one-time cost + first-year recurring cost + hardware and network + internal implementation labour + GST and other applicable taxes.
Steady-state annual total = quoted recurring cost + hosting and interfaces + support and upgrades + internal operating labour + GST and other applicable taxes.
Add a cash-flow column if annual amounts are paid upfront. A monthly equivalent is not a monthly cancellation right.
For a three-to-five-year view, use the renewal, inflation, currency, volume, and module rules in the contract. Do not invent an annual maintenance percentage when the supplier has not quoted one.
Compare three views of the same quote
One total is not enough for procurement, finance, and operations to see the same decision.
| View | Include | Decision it supports |
|---|---|---|
| Contracted cash | Invoices, payment dates, deposits, taxes, renewal | Budget and cash-flow approval |
| Full economic cost | Contracted cash plus devices, network, internal labour, dual running, downtime allowance | TCO comparison |
| Exit-adjusted cost | Full economic cost plus archive, export, termination, and transition | Lock-in and replacement risk |
For each view, calculate year one, a normal later year, and the chosen contract horizon. If a supplier will not state a renewal or exit figure, keep the value unknown and make that uncertainty visible beside the total.
Record quote provenance
Every number should carry the vendor, proposal version, date, currency, tax status, billing unit, quantity, term, and owner who confirmed it. Keep the original proposal as evidence. When a sales email changes a figure, update the workbook as a new version rather than overwriting the old one.
This catches a common comparison error: one team uses a tax-inclusive three-year total while another enters an ex-tax first-year invoice. Both numbers may be accurate and still be useless beside each other.
Licence models hide different risks
| Model | Headline | Rows buyers often miss |
|---|---|---|
| Hosted subscription | Recurring facility, bed, user, or module charge | Implementation, migration, interfaces, storage, usage, support tier, renewal, exit |
| Perpetual licence | Software licence and quoted support or maintenance | Infrastructure, upgrades, database, security, support gaps, major releases |
| Government programme | Programme access | Eligibility, rollout, local devices, connectivity, implementation, support, change control |
| Open source | No proprietary licence for the core source | Implementation partner, configuration, hosting, interfaces, security, support, upgrades, recovery |
NIC describes e-Hospital as an as-is government-hospital SaaS product. Bahmni is open source. Neither page supplies a universal private-hospital price, so neither should be converted into one.
Migration is a cost centre
Inventory every source before asking for a migration quote:
- patient identities, duplicates, merges, and aliases;
- visits, admissions, diagnoses, procedures, and discharge records;
- allergies, medication history, prescriptions, and administrations;
- orders, results, images, reports, and attachments;
- charges, receipts, deposits, refunds, packages, claims, and balances;
- items, batches, expiry, suppliers, purchase, issue, and stock; and
- users, roles, signatures, amendments, and audit history.
Require profiling, mapping, trial migration, clinical and financial validation, correction, final migration, reconciliation, sign-off, and legacy archive access. “Data migration included” is not a complete scope.
Interfaces need lifecycle pricing
An interface price should cover more than initial development. Ask for:
- specification and mapping;
- build or configuration;
- test environment and test messages;
- production setup;
- acknowledgment, retry, and error queue;
- monitoring and support;
- correction and reconciliation; and
- change testing when either connected system is upgraded.
A standards label alone does not show whether the interface works. Test patient identity, order, result, correction, duplicate, downtime, recovery, and audit.
Internal labour belongs in TCO
Record hours and a defensible internal rate for:
- clinical design and order-set review;
- nursing, pharmacy, lab, radiology, billing, finance, and quality workshops;
- data cleaning and validation;
- super-user training and floor support;
- policy, privacy, security, and contract review;
- testing and defect retesting;
- dual entry during transition; and
- post-go-live correction.
This is not a reason to reject digitisation. It is how the hospital plans enough time to make it work.
Quote questions that change the total
- Which rows are fixed, estimated, capped, or usage based?
- Which prices change with beds, users, facilities, modules, storage, or transactions?
- What tax rate and treatment does each quote state?
- What is excluded from implementation and support?
- What response and restoration times are contractual?
- Are upgrades included? Who pays for interface regression testing?
- What is the renewal rule?
- What happens after termination?
- What complete data export is supplied, in which format, within what time, and at what cost?
- Who assists transition to the next system?
Put Hospital Copilot in the correct row
Hospital Copilot is separately demo-priced. It does not inherit Practice Copilot’s published per-clinician rates. A hospital can deploy the complete Patient Square HIS/EHR or retain its existing HIS/EHR and define Hospital Copilot workflows during discovery.
Required ADT, CPOE, eMAR, LIS, RIS, PACS, pharmacy, billing, interface, migration, and specialist workflows are scope and acceptance-test requirements, not automatic inclusions. If EHR-ready export is discussed, the exact product claim is EHR-ready export (PDF · HL7 · FHIR). That phrase does not promise certified interoperability or third-party write-back. ABDM integration remains roadmap-only.
Use the workbook before the sales call, then make each supplier fill the same rows.