Unit cost analysis of COVID-19 field hospital in Bang Bua Thong District, Nonthaburi

Abstract

The field hospital had been established to support the treatment of COVID-19 patients and also to prevent the spread of the virus to families, communities, and other patients in their hospital. But at the same time, the establishment of a field hospital requires a large amount of resources of the responsible hospital such as medical personnel, materials and medical equipment. However, very few researches have been done to analyze these issues. The purpose of this study was to determine the unit cost and cost recovery of field hospital for the treatment of COVID-19 patients. This research was a descriptive study by retrospectively collecting data from hospital records and cost databases of Bang Bua Thong Field Hospital under the responsibility of Bang Bua Thong Hospital, which was opened from July 15 - October 4, 2021. The researcher analyzed data from the perspective of service providers, considering only accounting costs. The results showed that the field hospital had a total of 979 patients with a total cost of 8,081,868 baht, representing a cost of 8,256 baht per patient. The field hospital received compensation from the public health insurance schemes for a total of 32,086,067.26 baht with a cost recovery of 6.00. The findings of this research may benefit not only the development of efficient and appropriate use of resources of field hospitals, but also the development and optimization of compensation rates from public health insurance schemes.