Top 15 most expensive countries to be hospitalized in

Craving a luxurious vacation? Depending on where you travel, a five-star hotel stay might actually cost you less than a night at the hospital. You might think the average bill for a US hospital is expensive at $642 per night. But surprisingly, we rank only 17th on Finder.com’s list of the most expensive hospital stays worldwide.

Finder.com analyzed primary, secondary and teaching hospital costs in 189 countries reported in the World Health Organization’s 2011 health costs data to discover that the No. 1 spot belongs to the independent city-state of Monaco, where a single night’s snooze on a hospital bed will empty your pocket of an average $3,371 — or 425% more than the price of a US hospital bed. Given a five-star hotel in Monaco costs roughly $509 a night, you could stay seven nights in a luxury hotel in Monaco for just a few hundred dollars more than your one night with doctors.

Better yet, you could instead pay for travel insurance, which often includes emergency medical benefits that cover emergency hospital stays. We collected travel insurance quotes from numerous providers to discover at a mere $16 a day on average, it’s peace of mind that’s 211 times cheaper than sleeping on a hospital bed, should you need it.

Trailing Monaco is Luxembourg at an average $1,775 per hospital night. This night of care is $1,596 cheaper than a hospital stay in Monaco, but it’s also a whopping 12 times more expensive than Luxembourg’s average five-star hotel, where you can rest like royalty for just $154 a night.

What are the overall most expensive countries for hospitalization?

Source: finder.com analysis of health delivery data from the World Health Organization (2011), Knoema’s Accomodation Price Index 2016, Trip Advisor, finder.com’s hotel comparison tool.

Our research team analyzed US National Travel and Tourism Office statistics for 2017 to determine how much you could pay for a hospital bed in popular tourist destinations.

Topping the most expensive countries popular among American travelers is the UK, where a hospital bed costs an average $218 a day. Shelling out 66% more than your average hospital stay in the States might sound reasonable enough, but it’s far more than the $16 a day you could instead pay for travel insurance.

How much does a hospital stay cost in popular destinations for US travelers?

Source: finder.com analysis of five-star hotel prices from Knoema’s Accomodation Price Index 2016, Trip Advisor, as well as finder.com’s hotel comparison tool

The most expensive hospital bed in our list of the top 15 US travel destinations is home to Guinness and U2: Ireland. The Emerald Isle averages $804 for one night at the hospital, or seven times more than the average five-star hotel, where you could pay only $111 a night for a luxury stay.

Average cost of a hospital stay in 189 countries

Source: finder.com analysis of health delivery data from the World Health Organization (2011)

• Methodology

  • We calculated the average cost of a hospital bed by averaging each country’s primary-level, secondary-level and teaching hospital costs found in the most recent WHO data from 2011. The data covered 189 countries, excluding Somalia and Zimbabwe, where no data was recorded.
  • We determined the top 15 destinations by analyzing data in the US National Travel and Tourism Office’s Travel Market Profile reports from 2000 to 2017.
  • We chose one low-range, one high-range and two mid-range travel insurance companies for quotes, averaging them to find the median cost for a week of travel insurance in each country.
  • We requested travel insurance quotes from Allianz Travel Insurance, World Nomads and Travel Guard on July 27, 2018, based on hypothetical travel from August 14, 2018, to August 21, 2018, for a 38-year-old.
  • We took the average cost of five-star hotels from Knoema’s Accommodation Price Index 2016. Kuwait, Qatar and San Marino were not included in Knoema’s data, and so we averaged quotes returned monthly from TripAdvisor and finder.com’s hotel comparison tool for five luxury hotels from August 2018 to July 2019.
  • We estimated the number of airline departures using total airline departures in the US National Travel Tourism Office’s 2017 Market Profile.
  • We multiplied percentages of departures for each country by total airline departures to find an estimated number of airline departures for each country.

For all media inquiries, please contact:

Richard Laycock, Insights editor and senior content marketing manager

E: uspr@finder.com

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Written by

Richard Laycock

Editorial & PR Lead

Richard Laycock is Finder’s NYC-based lead editor & insights editor, spending the last decade data diving, writing and editing articles about all things personal finance. His musings can be found across the web including on NASDAQ, MoneyMag, Yahoo Finance and Travel Weekly. Richard studied Media at Macquarie University, including a semester abroad at The Missouri School of Journalism (MIZZOU). See full bio