The Hidden Costs of Treating Severely 111 Patients: Charges and Resource Consumption in an Intensive Care Unit

  • 1 January 1983
    • journal article
    • Vol. 5  (1) , 81-86
Abstract
A detailed survey of the resources used by two common groups of intensive care unit (ICU) admissions in one medical center hospital found substantial cross-subsidization, with healthier patients admitted for monitoring using significantly less labor resources than sicker patients. Both groups had equal bed charges. This suggests that the resource costs of admitting stable patients to an ICU for monitoring are smaller than their average bed charge. On the other hand, the actual resource costs of treating sicker patients are almost twice their billed ICU charges.