Capital Expenditure
Also known as: CapEx, Capital Budget
Spending on an asset the organization will own and depreciate over years, which in a hospital is approved on an annual capital cycle rather than whenever the need appears.
Capital expenditure covers imaging equipment, building systems, major infrastructure, and any purchase above the organization’s capital threshold, commonly somewhere between five thousand and one hundred thousand dollars depending on the system.
The operationally important fact is the calendar. Capital requests are collected, ranked, and funded on an annual cycle tied to the fiscal year. A request that misses its window usually waits for the next one, regardless of merit. Mid-year capital does happen, through a supplemental or emergency request, but it competes against a much smaller pool and needs a stronger justification.
Software increasingly falls outside this cycle. A subscription is normally operating expense, which is why a subscription-priced product can sometimes be bought in months when its capital-priced equivalent would wait a year. Vendors who understand this reprice deliberately rather than by accident.
Be careful about the reverse, though: routing a purchase to operating budget to dodge the capital cycle puts it against an operating budget that is often tighter and owned by a department head with less discretion, not more.