HealthSouth Corporation claims to be “the nation’s leading owner and operator of inpatient rehabilitation hospitals and a leader in home-based care (home health and hospice), offering services in 36 states and Puerto Rico.” As of December 31, 2017, the company derived 96.7 percent of its hospital revenues from inpatient services. During 2017 it treated and discharged 171,922 patients, and the average length of a patient’s stay was 12.7 days. If one patient occupying one bed for one day represents a “patientday,” then HealthSouth produced 2,183,409 patient-days of output during 2017 (171,922 × 12.7 = 2,183,409). During this period, HealthSouth incurred depreciation and amortization costs of $183,800,000. For the purpose of this problem, assume that all of this is depreciation that is related to the property, plant, and equipment of inpatient hospitals. 

Required

a. Indicate whether the depreciation cost is a:

(1) Product (i.e., patient) cost or a general, selling, and administrative cost.

(2) Fixed or variable cost relative to the volume of production.

(3) Direct or indirect cost if the cost object is the cost of patient services provided in 2017.

b. Assume that HealthSouth incurred depreciation of $15,320,000 during each month of the 2017 fiscal year, but that it produced 196,000 patient-days of service during February and 166,000 patientdays of service during March. Based on monthly costs and service levels, what was the average amount of depreciation cost per patient day of service provided during each of these two months, assuming each patient-day of service was charged the same amount of depreciation?

c. If HealthSouth expected to produce 2,270,000 patient-days of service during 2017 and estimated its annual depreciation costs to be $190,000,000, what would have been its predetermined overhead charge per patient-day of service for depreciation? Explain the advantage of using this amount to determine the cost of providing one patient-day of service in February and March versus the amounts you computed in Requirement b.

d. If HealthSouth’s management had estimated the profit per patient-day of service based on its budgeted production of 2,270,000 patient-days, would you expect its actual profit per patient-day of service to be higher or lower than expected? Explain.