Coronavirus: Canadian hospitals spend $23,000 on typical COVID-19 patient, report finds
TORONTO – The average cost per hospital admission of a COVID-19 patient in Canada is estimated at $23,000, according to new data from the Canadian Institutes of Health Information.
That price tag applies to both ICU and non-ICU patients. By comparison, it’s more than three times the average cost for a person hospitalized for a heart attack, $8,000, and roughly the cost of being hospitalized for a kidney transplant patient, $27,000.
According to the data, the nearly $1 billion spent on hospitalized COVID-19 patients does not include hospitalizations in Quebec.
Data shows that Canadians hospitalized with COVID-19 spend an average of 15 days in the hospital. In contrast, the average hospital stay of a patient with pneumonia is seven days, the press release said.
“COVID-19 patients tend to have more severe illness and longer hospital stays. The data reinforces that the virus can cause a serious illness, not simply a severe flu. Nearly 1 in 4 hospitalized COVID-19 patients are admitted to the ICU and one in five die at this facility,” said Nathalie Robertson, information and financial standards manager for the Canadian Institutes of Health Information, in a statement. a press release.
On average, the cost for a COVID-19 patient admitted to the ICU is $55,000. For COVID-19 patients not admitted to the ICU, the cost is $15,000. By comparison, a pneumonia patient admitted to the ICU costs $22,000, a heart attack patient in the ICU costs $8,400 on average, and a patient with the flu costs $4,959 on average.
Much of the hospital’s spending goes to compensation and supplies.