Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 3, 1990                   TAG: 9003052203
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Charles Hite Medical Writer
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

INTENSIVE CARE IS COSTLY MEDICINE

Dr. Dudley Rochester, the senior physician on duty, agrees but has one suggestion. "Look up and see what it will cost to give the full two weeks of treatment."

The next day, the student has the answer: $1,085.

For Rochester, it is a way to remind doctors in training that even the simple things they do for patients can cost a lot of money.

The charge for a bed for one day on the medical intensive care unit is $1,487, nearly five times the fee for a bed on a regular floor. After factoring in fees for typical procedures and tests in an ICU, the average charge per day at UVa comes to nearly $3,500.

The typical patient on the medical intensive care unit at UVa stays four or five days. But many patients end up staying weeks, even months.

Patients on ventilators - mechanical breathing machines - sometimes run up bills totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. Every hour a ventilator runs costs the patient $5.72. Each time the ventilator readings are monitored costs another $5.72. Each time adjustment for pressure and oxygen flow costs $3.32. The minimum fee for 30 days on a ventilator is nearly $8,500.

James Thompson was in and out of the ICU six times in 18 months for one of the most common ailments treated on the unit: uncontrolled bleeding from the gastrointestinal tract.

The average patient with that problem runs up a bill of nearly $5,400 per stay. But Thompson was not typical. His six trips to the hospital cost nearly $97,000, not including doctors' fees. Some of his ICU charges:

$87 for storing and processing each unit of blood he received.

$225 to examine and treat his intestinal tract with an endoscope.

$160 for an echocardiogram to examine his heart.

$53 for one dosage of a drug to maintain his blood pressure.

$23 for a lab test measuring the level of chemicals in his blood.

$280 for a CAT scan of his head.

Memo: Life and Death in Intensive Care