Cost-Analysis of Heart Failure Cases: A Pilot Single Center Study in Egypt

Background: Cardiovascular disorders accounted for 33% of the total DALYs lost and for nearly half of all Egyptians deaths from NCDs. Egypt is experiencing a rising trend in health care expenditure, in line with the global trend. Comprehensive studies evaluating the prevalence, mortality and total cost of heart failure (HF), are lacking in the Middle East generally and in Egypt particularly. Thus the current pilot study aimed to figure out an estimate of the costs incurred by heart failure patients at the cardiology department of Kasr-Alainy Hospital (KAH). Objective: To calculate estimate of both the direct medical and non-medical costs of HF patients. Methods: A pilot Economic Cost analysis study was conducted at Kasr Al Aini Hospitals' cardiology department. A convenience sample of 15 HF patients were recruited. Micro-costing approach was used to estimate the average daily hospital cost per HF patient through implementation of the Activity Based Costing (ABC) model. Data was collected, cleaned, and entered to Microsoft Excel program to perform quantitative analysis. Results: The mean age of the HF patients in the studied sample was 53.5 ± 13.7, of which 60% were males and 40% were females. The median (Min-Max) length of stay (LOS) was 13 (Range 2-20) days. The average HF inpatient cost/ day in the cardiology department from January to April 2016 was 55.52 (Range 11.98- 196.90) $ and average cost per hospital admission was 721.83 (Range 155.74-2559.81) $ (exchange rate of 2016). Conclusion & Recommendations: That kind of research could provide and built up a picture of the constraints and competing priorities in budget setting process and the health sector needs and willing to commit in term of performance and accountability, which will improve planning and reallocation of resources in health care sector.