Hospitals often think they successfully negotiated savings and a “best deal” on medical equipment because they either paid a lower price than they were previously quoted, or used third party benchmarking to reduce the purchase cost. These savings can often be an “illusion” because, while the price of the equipment may have gone down, the corresponding price of annual equipment service, or consumables required for use with equipment, have gone up. Avoid this illusion by checking not only your purchase price, but the price of all your other annual costs to make sure that they haven’t been increased to offset the “savings” you may have thought you received.