The DRG system, and the increase in hospital costs per patient, has motivated
hospitals to install sophisticated cost accounting systems, usually systems that they purchase from an outside computer software organization and then adapt to their own needs. Some hospitals provide information processing services to other hospitals on a contract basis. These systems provide information on individual patients (similar to job-cost systems in automobile repair shops), and they report actual costs compared with standard costs for each DRG; costs are classified by departments and even by attending physicians within departments.