COVID-19 and hospital management costs: the Italian experience

Background This article investigates the hospital costs related to the management of COVID-19 positive patients, requiring a hospitalization (from the positivity confirmation to discharge, including rehabilitation activities). Methods A time-driven activity-based costing analysis, grounding on administrative and accounting flows provided by the management control, was implemented to define costs related to the hospital management of COVID-19 positive patients, according to real-word data, derived from six public Italian Hospitals, in 2020. Results Results reported that the higher the complexity of care, the higher the hospitalization cost per day (low-complexity = euro475.86; medium-complexity = euro700.20; high-complexity = euro1,401.65). Focusing on the entire clinical pathway, the overall resources absorption, with the inclusion of rehabilitation costs, ranged from 6,198.02euro to 32,141.20euro, dependent from the patient's clinical condition. Conclusions Data could represent the baseline cost for COVID-19 hospital management, thus being useful for the further development of proper reimbursement tariffs devoted to hospitalized infected patients.