The longer you can look back, the better you can look forward

—Sir Winston Churchill

Objectives: To compare the hospitalization day price, and the hospitalization costs 100 years ago with the present situation.

Methods: Municipal and hospital archives of two cities, Maastricht in The Netherlands and Tongeren in Belgium, were studied systematically for reports of costs. These were compared with the present accounts.

Results: Starting from the second part of the nineteenth century, an official day price was calculated each year by averaging the total hospital expenditures by the total number of hospitalization days. Of all expenditures, nutrition accounted for nearly 50% of expenses. Differences with the current situation are striking. Nowadays, the day price is a negotiated tariff. Management and salaries make up more than 70% of the present expenditures.

Conclusions: Hospitalization day prices have been used for approximately 150 years to determine hospitalization costs. Since then, the total hospital expenditures and the relative cost components have changed considerably. Compared with the spending power of people, the cost of one day in the hospital increased substantially.