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Posted yesterday at 11:00 a.m.
How much does a patient with COVID-19 cost in intensive care?
Yvon Office, Quebec
Short answer: it’s very expensive. Approximately $42,167 per patient in intensive care, according to calculations by the Quebec Ministry of Health based on rates from the Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec (RAMQ).
Of course, it costs the patient nothing. In Quebec, we made the (excellent) choice of having universal health insurance. The patient does not pay anything for his stay in the hospital, it is the health insurance scheme that bears the bill.
If it costs nothing to the patient, there is still a cost to the health care system, funded by taxpayers.
On average, since the start of the pandemic, patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in intensive care cost $42,167 per stay. They stay in intensive care for 9.2 days. Each day in intensive care costs the health system $4,583, according to RAMQ rates.
Counting all hospitalizations (in intensive care as well as in regular beds) since the start of the pandemic, an hospitalized COVID-19 patient costs an average of $22,759 per stay, according to the Ministry of Health. Its average stay is 16.7 days, which therefore amounts to a cost to the system of $1363 per day. These figures include all costs to the system except physician compensation, diagnostic and therapeutic services.
To give you an idea, $22,759 is what a taxpayer earning $126,000 paid in provincial taxes in 2021.
For $42,167, the cost of a COVID-19 stay in intensive care is the bill of a taxpayer earning just over $200,000 a year.
How to avoid going to the hospital because of COVID-19? By adopting sanitary practices that reduce our risk of catching COVID-19 (e.g. masks in crowded indoor public places, good indoor ventilation, outdoor meetings). And getting vaccinated. A third dose offers 90% protection against the risk of hospitalization associated with COVID-19. This protection drops to 70% after six months, according to UK Public Health.
Getting vaccinated protects us against the risk of developing COVID-19 serious enough to send us to the hospital. And it can save the health care system a lot of money.
Data from the Quebec Ministry of Health as of August 18.