Economical aspects of coronary angiography for diagnostic purposes: a Belgian perspective

Abstract

Coronary angiography (CA) is an increasing diagnostic procedure in Belgium. The aim of this analysis was to look at the financial aspects of CA in a large tertiary Belgium hospital to establish if current reimbursement is appropriate. For the analysis of costs we considered the use of the catheterisation laboratory, personnel costs and material costs during multiple weekly periods in the spring of 2023. We calculated that one cathlab needs to perform 8.21 CA's to equal incomes with costs. To allow for a small positive income (200€) for the hospital/cardiologist 9 procedures per cathlab day are required. Our hospital performs a 7 (mean) ± 0.75 (standard deviation) of CA's per cathlab day and therefore does not reach this financial break-even point. Our calculations are on the safe side, since coronary physiological interrogation with fractional flow reserve (FFR) was excluded from this analysis. Nevertheless, this is a cost-effective technique for which no extra reimbursement is foreseen in the current Belgium system.

Keywords:

• Coronary angiography
• economical aspects
• costs
• coronary artery disease
• fractional flow reserve
• Belgium
• health policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

L. Minten is supported by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) Grant 1194521N and by Belgian Fund for Heart surgery (Brussels, Belgium) Grant 489686.