Cost analysis of the Kozak protocol as used in an Ontario hospital in the treatment of children with epidermolysis bullosa.

Conventional treatment of epidermolysis bullosa is often unsuccessful. The Kozak protocol is an alternative that has been given considerable public support in Ontario. The incremental cost of this treatment program at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, was examined. The departments of nursing, pharmacy and food services each kept records of salaries and supply costs applicable to the care of nine patients with epidermolysis bullosa who were treated in the fiscal year 1982-83. The selected direct costs to the hospital were compared with the projected costs if these patients had been treated in Dr. Kozak's clinic in West Germany or under the financial arrangements offered to Dr. Kozak by the Ontario minister of health. At a total incremental cost of +255.92 per patient-day, care at the Hospital for Sick Children may not currently be the least expensive means of offering the Kozak protocol to Ontario children. However, the major expense of the program, the nurses' salaries, could be reduced if the patients' parents were to assume many of the nursing tasks; this would make the hospital's program the most cost-effective method of treating children with epidermolysis bullosa.