The hospital costs of stroke patients in Chinese island populations: an 11-year tendency analysis

Background: The impact of stroke is devastating the life of patients, families, and even the communities. The cost of treatment; however, has the tendency of increasing nowadays, which has brought a heavy burden to patients and their families. Our study aims to collect the data of the hospital cost among stroke patients in Chinese island populations over the past decade and provide the scientific improvement for stroke.

Methods: We retrospectively collected the basic information and hospital costs of the stroke patients in Dalian Changhai Hospital from 2003 to 2013 using the Information Registration System of Inpatient.

Results: The total cumulative hospital admissions for stroke in Dalian Changhai Hospital were 1367 and showed a rising tendency from 2003 to 2013. Our results illustrated that the annual cumulative hospital costs of stroke inpatients increased rapidly in the past 11 years (the average rise was 37.71% per year), and the mean hospital cost per admission was 1.66% higher than that before, when the mean length of hospital days showed a downward tendency. Medication cost was found to be the largest part in the overall hospital cost (as a high percentage of 73.94%); however, traditional Chinese medicine only occupied quite a small proportion in the medicines.

Conclusions: The hospital cost for stroke in Dalian Changhai County has brought an increasingly heavy economic burden to the local government and residents.