While the extent of care and the costs covered for a Covid-19 patient admitted to hospital depend largely on what and how much medical cover they have, there is no denying the amounts involved are huge.
And while those reliant on public healthcare may not be charged for the care they receive, there is still a cost to the state, even though this is not specifically quantified by the department of health.
According to Discovery, the country’s largest medical aid provider, in-hospital treatment for Covid-19 infection is covered from the Hospital Benefit, in accordance with the member’s chosen health plan and Prescribed Minimum Benefits (PMB) regulations.
No deposit is payable on admission and no overall hospital limit applies across all Discovery plans, according to Dr Noluthando Nematswerani, head of the Centre For Clinical Excellence at the medical scheme.
The average cost for a Covid-19 admission in which a member passed away is R290,000.
— Nematswerani
But what is the ultimate cost of a Covid-19 infection when the patient needs to be admitted to hospital?
Nematswerani said the average length of hospital stays and the costs involved varied.
Patients admitted to high care spent an average of 10 days in hospital, at a cost of about R120,000.
She said a 15-day stay in ICU, with ventilation (“oxygen and ventilation are covered in-hospital as part of the hospital event costs”), averaged at R271,000. Extremely ill patients averaged 18.8 days in ICU, at a cost of about R439,000.
“The average cost for a Covid admission in which a member passed away is R290,000,” Nematswerani said.
Another cost for patients who require emergency treatment and admission is that of an ambulance. These amounts are detailed in the Road Accident Tariff Document. A trip in a basic ambulance with life support in an urban area, taking no longer than 45 minutes, is listed as R1,902.99, while for a long-distance trip the cost is R31,65/km up to 100km, then R11,11/km above that.
Kwara Kekana, spokesperson for the Gauteng health department, said they did not have unit costs for patients or for individual clinical conditions.
She said there were no cost systems ascribed to levels of care and in cases where this was prescribed in terms of the Uniform Patient Fee Schedule or derived from expenditure data, neither system could “mimic the actual and true cost of providing for a service”.
This, she said, meant the public health system could not quantify the costs of a Covid-19 patient at any level of care required.
For patients with medical aid who don’t require hospital admission, the costs of contracting a fairly severe infection requiring testing, care and consultation with a doctor are also high.
Sunday Times journalist Graeme Hosken and his wife, Adele, both caught the coronavirus at the end of July. Each had an initial telephonic consultation with their doctor — each of which came with a R2,000 bill. Hosken required oxygen, which he got through a mobile oxygen concentrator at a hire cost of R850. To buy the system would have cost R17,000.
The couple were treated on an outpatient basis, had medical aid and were sick for two weeks. They had blood tests, all but one of their consultations with doctors happened telephonically and they had one call-out of paramedics to their home
“Altogether, it is probably going to cost me personally about R6,000,” Hosken said.
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