The Cost of Treating Patients Hospitalized with COVID-19

A new RAND study finds that the average cost of treating hospitalized COVID-19 patients increased from about $10,000 during the first weeks of the pandemic to roughly $13,000 in March 2022.

This increase was five times faster than the rate of medical inflation during the same period. And when extrapolated to the more than six million COVID hospitalizations in the United States during the first two years of the pandemic, it suggests that the cost of caring for these patients could have reached $70 billion.

What explains this rapid rise in costs? For one, “the way doctors treated patients evolved as we learned about COVID-19,” says lead author Kandice Kapinos. “Then once the vaccines became available, the makeup of patients entering hospitals began to change.”

Importantly, this study looked at the direct costs of providing care to patients, not the amount billed to insurers or the amounts paid. These estimates help paint a clearer picture of the burden that COVID put on hospitals and could improve public health readiness in the future.