Every hospital administrator shopping for a system asks the same first question, and gets the same unsatisfying answer: it depends. That is true, but it is not helpful on its own. What follows is the part vendors usually leave out, which is how the pricing is actually built and where the money goes that is not in the headline.
One thing to be straight about before anything else: we are a vendor, and we quote rather than publish too. The guidance below is written so it works against our quote as well as anyone else's.
Why nobody publishes a price
You will find very few naira price lists for hospital software in Nigeria, and the ones you do find are usually either out of date or attached to a stripped-down product. There are real reasons for that, not just sales tactics.
Hospitals vary more than the software does. A 12-bed maternity clinic and a 12-bed dialysis centre need different modules, have different user counts, and put very different loads on the system. Bed count alone is a poor predictor. Naira pricing also has to be revisited more often than an annual price list allows, which is why vendors who quote in naira tend to quote fresh rather than publish.
The practical consequence: expect to request quotes, and expect them to arrive in formats that are hard to compare. That is the problem this page solves.
The three pricing models you will be quoted
Per-bed, per-month
Common for hospitals above roughly 20 beds. The vendor charges a fixed amount per active bed, usually including hosting, support, and a standard module set. The rate typically falls as bed count rises. This model is predictable and makes budgeting straightforward, but check what counts as an "active" bed, because definitions differ and it matters if your occupancy swings.
Per-user, per-seat
The vendor prices by named user rather than by bed. The count usually includes clinicians, nurses, pharmacists, lab technicians, receptionists, and finance staff. This suits facilities where bed count misleads: high-turnover day clinics, diagnostic centres, optometry chains. Its weakness is that it penalises you for giving staff access, which is the opposite of what you want from a system meant to replace paper. If you are quoted per-seat, price the realistic full staff list, not a minimum.
Flat monthly fee with modules stacked on top
A base fee covers the core platform, and paid modules are added: pharmacy, laboratory, theatre, HMO claims, and so on. This has the most attractive headline and the widest gap between headline and final invoice. Price the bundle you will actually run in year one, not the base.
You will also meet a fourth option that is not a subscription at all: a one-time perpetual licence, sometimes marketed specifically as an escape from monthly fees. It can genuinely suit a hospital with capital available and modest change needs. Ask what is excluded, because hosting, support, and upgrades usually are, and those are recurring whether or not the licence is.
Comparing quotes on the same basis
Quotes become comparable only when you force them onto identical terms. Send every vendor the same brief, and insist the quote states all of the following.
- Bed count and full user count, with the user count being every member of staff who will need access, not a starting allocation.
- The exact module list, named. "Standard modules" means different things to different vendors.
- Whether hosting, support, upgrades, and daily backups are included or billed separately.
- Onboarding, data migration, and staff training: included, one-off, or recurring.
- The total for year one and the total for year three, so escalation is visible.
- The price escalation clause, in writing.
- What happens to your data if you leave, and in what format you get it.
If a vendor will not put those in writing before contract stage, that is information too.
The four costs that hide outside the headline
1. Per-module add-ons
The base platform covers registration and consultations, then pharmacy, lab, theatre, and HMO claims each carry a fee. A working hospital needs most of them, so the base price describes a system you would not actually run. Ask for the price of the configuration you will use on day one.
2. Per-user surcharges above a low cap
A quote that includes "up to 10 users" sounds generous until you count reception, records, nursing, pharmacy, laboratory, billing, and management. Hospitals routinely need three or four times that. Establish the per-user rate above the cap before signing, not after.
3. Paid backups
Some vendors treat daily backup and point-in-time recovery as a premium tier. For a clinical system holding patient records this is not an optional extra, and under the NDPA you carry the obligation to protect that data whether or not your vendor charges for it. Treat paid-tier backup as part of the base price when you compare.
4. Onboarding and training billed separately
Migration from paper or an older system, plus training the staff who will use it daily, is the difference between a system that gets adopted and one that gets worked around. If it is billed separately, get the figure before you sign, because it lands in the same budget year as the subscription.
Dollar-priced quotes: when to ask why
If a quote arrives in dollars, ask what is behind it. A system built for the Nigerian market should be able to bill in naira. Dollar pricing often signals a foreign product being resold, which raises a more important question than currency: whether the billing module has ever met an HMO, and whether patient identity has ever met a NIN. If it has not, you will end up running a second system for claims, which is usually the exact problem you set out to solve.
Dollar exposure also transfers exchange-rate risk to you across a multi-year contract. If you do proceed with a dollar-priced vendor, agree how and when the naira equivalent is fixed.
The revenue test
Here is the quickest sanity check on any quote, and it needs no market data at all.
Software should be a low single-digit percentage of your revenue. Take the monthly figure you have been quoted, including the modules you will genuinely use, and set it against your monthly revenue. If it is in the low single digits, the quote is in a normal range for a business system. If it is running into double digits, something is wrong: either the system is specified far beyond what your hospital needs, or it is simply overpriced.
A second check that catches the same problem from another angle: compare the monthly software cost to what you pay one mid-level clinician. Software that costs more than a doctor is very hard to justify for a small facility, whatever the feature list says.
These tests are useful precisely because they are anchored to your hospital rather than to a market average. A figure that is reasonable for a 60-bed hospital in Lagos can be absurd for an 8-bed clinic, and no published price range can tell you which you are.
Thinking in three years, not one
The monthly fee is the headline, but the three-year total is the decision. Multiply the year-one monthly figure by 36, add onboarding and migration, then add the escalation the contract allows. That number, not the monthly one, is what you are committing to.
Migration costs land in year one and recover from year two onward, so a quote that is higher on migration but lower on subscription can win over three years. You cannot see that from monthly figures alone.
What good looks like
- The quote is in naira, itemised, and states what is included rather than what is available.
- Hosting, support, upgrades, and daily backups are in the base price.
- Onboarding and training are named with a figure, even if that figure is zero.
- The user cap matches your real staff list.
- The escalation clause is written down before you sign.
- You can export your own data, in a usable format, without a fee.
- The vendor can show you HMO claims working, not just described.
Frequently asked questions
Why will no one tell me a price?
Because the honest number depends on your bed count, your user count, and your module list, and a vendor quoting before knowing those is guessing. Ask two or three vendors for written quotes against the same brief and you will have a real price range for your hospital, which is more useful than any published average.
Should I pay in naira or dollars?
Naira, if you can. A system built for Nigerian hospitals should bill in the currency your revenue arrives in, and a dollar quote usually points at a foreign product that has not been localised for NHIA and NIN. If you do go with a dollar-priced vendor, agree how the naira equivalent is fixed across the contract term.
Can I get a hospital management system in Nigeria for free?
Open-source systems such as OpenMRS and Bahmni are free to licence and are genuinely strong in teaching hospitals and large NGOs with engineering teams. For a private hospital with no internal IT department the free licence is misleading, because the staff cost of running it usually exceeds a commercial subscription, and it is not built around NHIA, the NDPA, or NIN out of the box.
What price escalation should I expect?
Whatever the clause says, and that is the point: get it in writing. Some vendors fix the year-two price at signing, others adjust annually. A difference that looks small in year one compounds meaningfully across three.
How much does NaijaHealth cost?
We quote against your hospital rather than publish a rate, for the reasons above. New hospitals get a three-month trial with onboarding and support included. After that, what you pay depends on your size and the modules you switch on, billed in naira, with setup and staff training included rather than billed separately. Talk to us and we will work out a plan that fits, and you are welcome to hold our quote to every test on this page.