[Real daily costs of patients admitted to public intensive care units]

Patient care costs in intensive care units are high and should be considered in medical decision making.

To calculate the real disease related costs for patients admitted to intensive care units of public hospitals.

Using an activity associated costs analysis, the expenses of 716 patients with a mean age of 56 years, mean APACHE score of 20 (56% males), admitted to intensive care units of two regional public hospitals, were calculated. Patients were classified according to their underlying disease.

The costs per day of hospital stay, in Chilean pesos, were $ 426,265 for sepsis, $ 423,300 for cardiovascular diseases, $ 418,329 for kidney diseases, $ 404,873 for trauma, $ 398,913 for respiratory diseases, $ 379,455 for digestive diseases and $ 371,801 for neurologic disease. Human resources and medications determined up to 85 and 12% of costs, respectively. Patients with sepsis and trauma use 32 and 19% of intensive care unit resources, respectively. Twenty seven percent of resources are invested in patients that eventually died.

A real cost benefit analysis should be performed to optimize resource allocation in intensive care units.