Comparison of COVID-19 hospitalization costs across care pathways: a patient-level time-driven activity-based costing analysis in a Brazilian hospital

Table 4 Patient’s characteristics by care pathway

Variable	Emergency + Ward	Emergency + Ward + ICU	Ward + ICU	Emergency + ICU	ICU Only	p
Variable	N = 118 (57)	N = 43 (21)	N = 27 (13)	N = 8 (4)	N = 12 (6)
Age, median (IQR)	59 (46; 66)	61 (46; 70)	53 (42; 69)	64 (54; 77)	64 (51; 71)	0.479
Male gender	49 (42)	21 (49) ^a	15 (56) ^a	7 (88) ^a	6 (50) ^a	0.108
Secondary diagnosis	88 (56)	32 (20)	20 (13)	7 (4)	10 (6)	0.889
Hypertension	68 (58)	23 (54)	14 (52)	4 (50)	5 (42)	0.847
Obesity	26 (22)	10 (23)	7 (26)	1 (13)	2 (17)	0.925
Diabetes	42 (36)	12 (28)	10 (37)	4 (50)	4 (33)	0.861
OSCI						< 0.001
Dead	10 (9)	12 (28) ^a	2 (7) ^a	7 (88) ^a	11 (92) ^a
Severe**	0 (0)	31 (72)	25 (93)	1 (13)	1 (8)
Mild	108 (92)	0 (0)	0 (0)	0 (0)	0 (0)
LoS, median (IQR)	5 (2; 9)	19 (13; 32)^a	14 (9; 23)^a	16 (7; 26)^a	18 (8; 31)^b	< 0.001

Data expressed as n (%), unless specified otherwise. Length of Stay (LoS) expressed as days
OSCI Ordinal Scale for Clinical Improvement, LoS Length of Stay
*p-value for the comparison between care pathways using Kruskal-Wallis or Chi-square test. **All patients admitted to the ICU were categorized as severe at OSCI. Pairwise comparison with Dunn’s test result: a. p < 0.001 vs. Emergency + Ward. b. p = 0.02 vs. Emergency + Ward

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