(NewsNation) — The cost of treating COVID-19 patients increased 26% in the first two years of the pandemic, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
The findings, published Wednesday in JAMA Network Open, show average costs jumped from $10,094 in March 2020 to $13,072 in March 2022. The higher costs were associated with patients who had other medical conditions or those who underwent breathing support treatment.
“Defining the cost of treating hospitalized people with COVID-19 is important to fully understand the financial impact of the pandemic and improving public health readiness for future challenges,” Kandice A. Kapinos, the study’s lead author and a senior economist at RAND, said in a news release.
The study examined more than 1.33 million hospital stays from 841 facilities over the two-year span. It found patients with specific comorbidities had “significantly higher” costs than others.
People with obesity incurred an additional $2,924, and those with coagulation deficiency incurred an additional $3,017.
It cost an average of $36,484 for a stay during which the patient required extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, a type of breathing support where a machine circulates blood to remove carbon dioxide and add oxygen.
A total of 6.2 million COVID-19 patients were hospitalized during the first two years of the pandemic, RAND notes, “placing unprecedented demands on medical services worldwide.” More than 80% entered a hospital through the emergency department, 13% received mechanical ventilation, 27% spent time in the ICU and 13% died, according to RAND.
The study analyzed the costs of providing care to patients, not amounts billed to insurers or amounts paid. That calculation, RAND says, best estimates the strain put on hospitals.
“The way doctors treated patients evolved as we learned about COVID-19,” Kapinos said. “Then, once the vaccines became available, the makeup of patients entering hospitals began to change.”
The 26% increase in treatment costs was significantly higher than the 2% to 5% average annual inflation of medical costs.
“This was explained partly by changes in the use of ECMO, which also increased over time,” the study concluded. “Nonetheless, costs to provide inpatient care increased even as care practices changed, vaccination rates increased, and the variants of concern evolved.”
Researchers suggest that when the study’s findings are extrapolated out to all 6.2 million hospitalizations, the total cost of treating COVID patients could have reached $70 billion in the two-year period.
