Resource Utilization and Cost of Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19 in Iran: Rationale and Design of a Protocol

There is little data on direct medical costs and how to overcome the shock introduced by the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) which emerged in Wuhan, China The aim of this report is to present the methodology of an observational study for analyzing the resource utilization and direct medical costs of hospitalization A multicenter retrospective observational study will be conducted on hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in selected hospitals of Tehran University Medical Sciences from February to June 2020 Cost calculations will be based on micro-costing approaches according to the health insurance perspective Demographic, clinical, and cost data for the aforementioned patients will be collected through reviews of medical and financial records using a self-made checklist categorized in three parts The first part consists of demographic characteristics, the second part includes clinical information (e g , symptoms, comorbidities, and complications), and the third part consists of resource utilization and cost data Descriptive statistics (means, frequencies, percentages, and 95% confidence intervals) will be used to report data With this report we sought to provide a valuable framework for estimating the direct medical costs of COVID-19 for hospitalized-patients basis on the severity of presentation This will be the core for an assessment of the economic burden of COVID-19 in different presentations of the disease