How Do Hospitals Set Prices for COVID-19 Isolation Rooms?

COVID-19 has dramatically impacted the hospital industry. As hospitals adjust to new challenges, they must also face questions about new procedures and treatment requirements. Last week we took a close look at how hospitals are pricing COVID-19 lab tests. Now, let’s take a look at isolation rooms.

We sent out a survey to assess how hospitals were approaching this new pricing challenge. We received 40 responses.

Some of the questions focused on isolations rooms. These are not always broken out as a separate charge in the CDM. We asked our responders how many of them have an established isolation room charge. About 40% have a rate or plan to develop one. The remainder don’t and do not plan to add.

For those that already have a charge, or plan to add, a majority consider Room Capabilities (for example, a negative pressure environment) and different levels of clinical resource utilization (higher nursing ratios or protective supply usage, as example) as important when defining the charge.  

For those that have established a room rate, most consider it a separate room rate, not an add-on fee on top of the base room rate. Those that have established a rate, or plan to, about a third have for both special care (ICU) and routine (general med/surg bed).

For hospitals that currently have isolation room charges, or plan to add one, here is how they plan to proceed (it’s assumed that the 68% who did not respond represent the 60% not able to as they have no isolation room rate and/or do not plan to add one):

If you’d like more information about our survey, or to take a look at the result, let us know!