[The cost of care related to AIDS at the Henri Mondor Hospital].

A retrospective analysis of the cost of hospital care related to AIDS was undertaken at Henri Mondor hospital, Créteil, to prepare the hospital budget for 1988. Eight representative cases of the type of medical care were thoroughly evaluated with inventories of all direct expenses (medico-technical, pharmaceutical, accommodation) incurred between the first hospital admission of each patient and June 1987 or the patient's death. The study comprises 17 hospital stays of over 24 hours or 439 days of diagnosis and treatment. The total daily direct expenditure varied from 979 to 1119 FF/day (depending on whether the drug Zidovudine was used), that is to say an increase of 7 to 23% compared with the previous average daily cost in the same hospital unit (909 FF/day). The density of personnel is lower than recommended for units receiving patients with advanced AIDS. This lack of personnel is responsible for an underevaluation of total cost of about 10%. Should the number of admissions with this disease increase, the hospital personnel budget would suffer the most, even if hospital admission for AIDS continues to substitute for other decreased or abandoned activities and do not therefore appear in total overexpenditure.