Healthcare schemes to overcome financial toxicity of COVID-19: A retrospective single center study

Background

Indian healthcare system nearly crashed during the pandemic and victims of COVID-19 experienced huge health related economic burden. Thus, we aimed to quantify the direct medical cost associated with COVID-19 management along with the healthcare schemes.

Methods

A retrospective study was conducted for the duration of 8 months where the data of COVID-19 patients of one year (2020–2021) was collected from the medical record department. The data of COVID-19 patients of age 18–65 years with confirmed diagnosis based on RT-PCR test were included in the study whereas the data of special population such as pregnant, hemodialysis and patient undergoing surgery were excluded.

Results

Out of 1011 COVID-19 patients, 63.5% were males and 36.5% were female with the mean age of 43.8 ± 14.5 years and with 9.47 days mean length of hospitalization. On direct medical cost analysis, USD 1060.92 was the total median expenses which includes COVID package plus outside COVID package expenses. Similarly, USD 728 and USD 51.1 were the median amount claimed through healthcare schemes and median co-payments respectively. The total median expenses with and without healthcare schemes were found to be USD 1061.37 and USD 1052.94 respectively whereas co-payments with and without schemes were USD 26.005 and USD 1046.64.

Conclusion

Healthcare schemes are the best strategy to overcome the direct medical cost associated with the management of the disease. Quantifying the medical cost could provide an insight to develop effective policy to counteract the financial toxicity among patients.