Study shows cost of hospital care for COVID-19 patients increased during pandemic

The average cost of care for hospitalized COVID-19 patients increased five times faster than the rate of medical inflation during the first two years of the pandemic, at least in part due to the application of additional medical technologies during this period, according to a new study. Study by the RAND company.

Looking at patients treated at academic medical centers nationwide, researchers found that the average cost of treating COVID-19 infection rose from $10,094 in the early weeks of the pandemic to $13,072 in March 2022.

Significant additional costs were associated with patients suffering from diseases such as obesity or coagulation deficiencies such as hemophilia. Those who underwent extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, a respiratory support treatment used later in the pandemic to support patients, had much higher costs.

The results are published in the journal JAMA Open Network.

“Defining the cost of treating hospitalized people with COVID-19 is important to fully understanding the financial impact of the pandemic and improving public health preparedness for future challenges,” said Kandice A. Kapinos, lead author of the study. he study and senior economist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed unprecedented demand on medical services around the world, with estimated cases exceeding 660 million. During the first two years of the pandemic in the United States, 6.2 million Americans were hospitalized to treat the infection.

Peak demand for hospital services in the United States occurred during the omicron variant surge from November 2021 to February 2022, when COVID-19 patients accounted for more than a fifth of hospital admissions and nearly a third of intensive care beds.

While the pandemic has led to the cancellation of many elective surgeries and other financial problems for hospitals, relatively little research has focused on the cost of caring for the millions of COVID-19 patients treated in U.S. hospitals .

Researchers from RAND and partner institutions examined the cost of providing care to COVID-19 patients by analyzing information from a repository of clinical, administrative and financial details covering 97% of the nation’s academic medical centers, more than 800 hospitals in total.

The analysis looked at more than 1.3 million hospital stays from March 2020 to March 2022 and analyzed the costs of providing patient care, not the amount billed to insurers or the amounts paid. Researchers say these calculations best estimate the strain the disease places on hospitals.

More than 80% of hospitalized patients entered through emergency departments, 13% received mechanical ventilation, 27% spent time in intensive care, and 13% died. The adjusted cost of caring for COVID-19 patients increased by 26% over the two-year study period, compared to an overall annual average medical cost inflation of 2 to 5%.

“The way doctors treated patients evolved as we learned about COVID-19,” Kapinos said. “Then, once vaccines became available, the makeup of patients entering hospitals began to change.”

Patients with the highest costs were more likely to receive extracorporeal membrane oxygenation or mechanical ventilation, but were not necessarily those who died.

Extrapolating the study results to all 6.2 million COVID-19 hospitalizations in the United States during the study period, the researchers suggest that the direct cost of caring for patients with of COVID-19 during this period could have reached $70 billion.