THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON THE ROMANIAN HOSPITALS' EXPENSES. A CASE STUDY TOWARD THE FINANCIAL RESILIENCE AFTER THE PANDEMIC

ABSTRACT

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) affected almost all activities worldwide. The medical sector was one of those which were most significantly impacted because the medical infrastructure was not sized for such a high scale shock, specialized human resources and medical infrastructure proving to be much undersized and with slow growth potential. Many changes were required, important financial resources being mobilized in order to motivate medical staff, offer treatments for the most severely affected patients, but also to create new facilities where the increasing number of sick persons could be cured. In our research we want to offer a hospital cost perspective based on empirical analysis of the COVID-19 impact on different categories of expenses made by Romanian hospitals that treated patients with COVID-19 in different stages of their disease. The period analyzed was January 2019 to December 2020 on a monthly basis. Our results showed that expenses with goods and services, drugs, reagents and human resources are influenced by COVID-19 in a significant manner.