Teatment costs of patients admitted in dermatologic ward of Afzalipour hospital, Kerman

Care of patients with skin diseases may lead to high financial costs and burden on health system for societies and family members. In this study, we decided to evaluate the costs of treatments of patients admitted in the dermatology ward of Afzalipour Hospital, Kerman.

This is a retrospective, cross-sectional study performed from 2011 to 2017 on patients admitted in the dermatologic ward of Afzalipour Hospital. Demographic features of patients, duration of admission, cost of treatment, number and type of prescribed drugs as well as the patients’ and insurance organizations’ shares of the cost were recorded.

In this study, 940 patients were evaluated for six years. The mean age of the patients was 38.05±22.35 years and most of them were female. The mean duration of admission was 8.42±2.54 days. The insurance companies’ and patients’ shares of the fees were 93.8% and 6.2%, respectively. The highest costs belonged to prescribed drugs (37.9%) and hoteling (30.3%). The most common prescribed drugs were antihistamines (33.1%), topical steroids (27.7%) and systemic steroids (24.5%). The mean number of prescribed drugs in each admission was 6.30±4.02 (range
0-20). Patients suffering from Erythema and urticaria had the total highest costs of admission (81,360,000 Iran Rials).

In this study, the most frequent skin diseases were infectious and papulosquamous diseases. The highest and lowest cost of admission belonged to prescribed drugs and consultations, respectively. Also, the highest cost of admission belonged to patients with erythema and urticaria.