Patients in Telangana bore the highest hospital expenses among all Indian states in 2025 at an average of nearly Rs 53,000 for each instance of hospitalisation, according to a Union government survey. This includes hospitalisation across public and private medical institutions. The all-India average of hospital costs for the same period was Rs 37,858.
The latest Survey on Household Social Consumption: Health conducted by the National Statistics Office (NSO) also found that the percentage of persons covered under health insurance schemes has gone up significantly since the previous round of the survey in 2017-18. The coverage went up from 14% in rural areas and 19% in urban areas to 47% and 44%, respectively.
Still, people in Telangana had to spend Rs 46,316 on average as out-of-pocket medical expenditure (OOPME) per case of hospitalisation in 2025, the survey found. This was still the second-highest amount across states, following Sikkim (Rs 46,763).
In all five southern states, hospitalisation expenses were above the national average.
Private hospitals were the third most expensive in Tamil Nadu across Indian states after Sikkim (Rs 1,50,552) and Tripura (Rs 94,966).
Average hospitalisation costs were also found to be quite high in the Union Territory of Chandigarh (Rs 80,478), Sikkim (Rs 48,693), Maharashtra (Rs 44,778), Jharkhand (Rs 43,453), Uttar Pradesh (Rs 43,006), and Delhi (Rs 42,904).
The lowest average hospitalisation costs were recorded in Arunachal Pradesh (Rs 12,182), Tripura (Rs 14,663), Odisha (Rs 18,074), and Mizoram (Rs 20,848). However, in these states too, the average expenses in private hospitals ranged from around Rs 44,000 to Rs 95,000.
The average medical expenditure per institutional childbirth was Rs 15,595 across India, with Kerala being the most expensive at nearly Rs 40,000.
The survey was conducted from January to December, 2025, covering around 1.4 lakh households across rural and urban India.
The study also measured morbidity, or the prevalence of disease, and found that across India, 13.1% of persons reported being ill during the last 15-day period from the time of being surveyed. More women (14.4%) reported being ill than men (11.8%).
However, the hospitalisation rate (annual number of hospital admissions excluding childbirth divided by the total population) was slightly higher among men (3.0) than women (2.8).
While children under the age of four were hospitalised mostly because of infections, as patients’ age increased, injuries and gastrointestinal illnesses also became top reasons for hospitalisations up to the age of 44. Cardiovascular diseases were most frequently reported after the age of 45.