Health Care Costs

Treatment of drug resistant TB is quite hectic as it requires the consistent use of a number of antibiotics for a considerable reason of time. Patients suffering from this form of TB also require close monitoring of health care professionals to ensure that they adhere to the treatment plan as instructed by the medics. For this reason, the cost of treating drug resistant TB is astronomical. There are also other charges that are involved in the entire process of treating a patient suffering from drug resistant TB. This paper is a justification of the amount used in treating Mr. Score who had been diagnosed with drug resistant TB. The paper attempts to justify how close to $300,000 was used in treating a patient suffering from drug resistant TB. 

The charges started immediately the patient was suspected to be suffering from TB. Immediately Mr. Score arrived in the hospital with TB like symptoms, the first thing that the health care providers did is to conduct several tests to confirm that indeed the patient was suffering from TB. Such tests included sputum tests, blood test as well as chest x-rays (Newton, 2007, Farmer, 2001). All these tests amounted to roughly $400. After these tests were completed and it was determined that the patient was indeed suffering from TB, he was hospitalized immediately in an isolation ward to prevent the disease from being passed on to other people through direct contact. The patient was hospitalized in the isolation room for two months and this attracted admission charges at the rate of $600 per day. This cost only includes admission charges and the allowances for the nurses who were taking care of the patient during this period. 

The prescription for the patient was to take about two and a half years. During the first eight months, the patient was to take five different types of drugs together win an injection. After this period, the injection was to be withdrawn and the five types of drugs continued for the next 20 months. At the end of the treatment period, the patient had received 244 injections and had ingested 13,664 pills. The total number of these drugs combined was about $150,000. In addition to the cost of purchasing the drugs, there are also the hospital charges that were levied as all this period the patient was under the direct observation of the hospital. For the close to two and a half years when the patient was being treated, he was visiting the hospital daily for his dose and all these visits were billed at a cost of $80,000. In addition to these visits, there were many tests that were conducted on the patient in the course of receiving treatment (Drobniewski, 2005, Pablos-Mendez, 2013)). TB medications have serious side effects such as liver failure and therefore test must be conducted regularly to ensure that these side effects are monitored and dealt with. All these tests cost an estimated $30,000.