Some COVID-19 patients incur substantial expenses after leaving hospital
The first six months after a COVID-19 hospitalization could bring bills totaling $2,000 or more.
The physical effects of COVID-19 may ease after patients leave the hospital, but the financial impact often continues.
“Although post-discharge out-of-pocket costs were modest for most COVID-19 survivors, about 10% of patients paid more than $2,000,” said Dr. Kao-Ping Chua, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan Medical School. “These costs will be on top of the large bills for COVID-19 hospitalization that patients are not getting, owing to the expiration of insurer cost-sharing waivers. The collective costs of hospitalization and care after discharge could result in financial toxicity for thousands of Americans.”
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Researchers from the University of Michigan and the Boston University Questrom School of Business analyzed out-of-pocket costs billed to patients hospitalized for COVID-19 in March through June of 2020 for a report in the American Journal of Managed Care. The new study comes just a month after the same team found that getting hospitalized for a serious case of COVID-19 could mean hospital bills averaging $1,600 to $4,000 for many patients.
The team has looked at costs for the health care that patients needed in the six months after their first COVID-related hospitalization. On average, patients with private insurance had bills of just less than $290, and those with Medicare Advantage were asked to pay around $270, suggesting that most patients had modest costs. However, for nearly 11% of privately insured patients and 9.3% of people covered by Medicare Advantage, the first six months after a COVID-19 hospitalization brought bills totaling $2,000 or more.
For people hospitalized in 2021 and 2022, these costs likely were higher, the researchers noted. That’s because the data come from 2020, before insurance companies rolled back temporary voluntary waivers that had protected patients from out-of-pocket costs for COVID-related hospitalizations, including COVID-19 readmissions.
Additional hospitalizations, procedures and prescription drugs drove post-discharge out-of-pocket costs. The authors call on insurers to reinstate waivers for COVID-related hospitalizations to reduce the financial toll on patients and the possibility that people with COVID-19 will avoid seeking care out of cost concerns.
“For most patients hospitalized for COVID-19, post-discharge care may not be a major source of financial stress,” the report concluded. “Although this is reassuring, our findings also suggest that a sizable minority of COVID-19 survivors have substantial out-of-pocket spending after discharge. These survivors could be particularly vulnerable to financial toxicity if they also receive bills for the hospitalization owing to the expiration of insurer cost-sharing waivers. Insurers should consider this possibility when deciding whether to reinstate cost-sharing waivers for COVID-19 hospitalizations.”
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