Psychiatric comorbidity in cardiovascular inpatients: costs, net gain, and length of hospitalization.

Although psychiatric comorbidity often goes undetected and untreated in cardiovascular patients, it is not clear whether the costs for a special treatment of psychiatric comorbidity are appropriately reflected in the reimbursement system. To investigate the economic impact of psychiatric comorbidity, we compared costs, returns, net gain, and duration of hospitalization in cardiovascular inpatients with and without psychiatric comorbidity.