Cover Story: The Ebola protocol, and what is the cost?

Breach of protocol. That was the initial explanation for how 26-year-old nurse Nina Pham contracted Ebola from a Liberian patient she was treating at a Dallas hospital. Three days later Pham's co-worker, 29-year-old Amber Joy Vinson, tested positive for the virus.

More than three weeks after Ebola was diagnosed for the first time in the United States, questions abound about whether the procedures for handling the deadly disease were followed and whether the protocols themselves should be overhauled.

As health officials grapple with controlling the spread of a Third World disease in the world's most technologically advanced country, here are some of the more perplexing questions to emerge:

How much has it cost to treat and respond to Ebola in Dallas?

Dallas County officials estimate the county's cost alone for responding to the Ebola crisis has topped $1 million and is climbing fast. That only counts dollars spent outside the hospital.

Typically, it costs $250,000 to $500,000 to treat an Ebola patient, said Dan Mendelson, CEO of Avalere Health, a Washington, D.C., consulting firm.

The meter starts running in the intensive care unit, where the average cost is about $14,000 a day, Mendelson said. At an average stay of 17 days, that's almost $250,000.

Add protective gear, which is in the tens of thousands of dollars. Tack on costs associated with the disposal of waste, which are significant and difficult to estimate. And factor in the really fuzzy costs such as patients or doctors who choose to use another hospital to avoid a facility in which Ebola patients are being treated.

"If you have admitting privileges in two hospitals and you know there is an Ebola patient in one, you as a physician might not send your patient to a facility that is caring for a patient with Ebola," Mendelson said. "There are associated PR costs, there are legal costs, and when we look at it holistically, we put a number of $250,000 to $500,000 for a case."

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Korri covers banking, finance and nonprofits for the Dallas Business Journal. Subscribe to our email newsletters.