OBJECTIVES: To assess average direct medical costs of treatment of consecutive stages of HCV in Poland. METHODS: A questionnaire study in 7 medical centres among experienced clinicians (1200 patients managed annually in total) was performed. Six separate questionnaires were prepared and initially validated for defined HCV health states: mild hepatitis-MiH, moderate hepatitis-MoH, compensated cirrhosis-CoC, decompensated cirrhosis-DeC, hepatocellular carcinoma-HCC and post liver transplant phase–1st (PLT1) and 2nd(PLT2) year of follow-up. Each professional was asked for describing a typical procedures set conducted in an theoretical average patient in specified chronic hepatitis C health state. The procedures sets consisted of a few main categories: hospitalisation, ambulatory care, diagnostic procedures, pharmacotherapy, rehabilitation, adequately to disease phase and in accordance with official procedures lists published by National Health Fund for 2011. Antiviral treatment was excluded from the analysis. RESULTS: Five questionnaires for each of mild hepatitis, moderate hepatitis, compensated cirrhosis, decompensated cirrhosis, and two for HCC and post liver transplant health states, were obtained. Calculated mean annual costs of defined health states and their relation to the cost of liver transplantation in Poland (200000PLN = 48000€ in 2010) are as follow: MiH with SVR–422PLN (99€), 0,2%; MoH with SVR–800PLN (188€), 0,4%; CoC with SVR–2018PLN (475€), 1,0%; MiH no SVR–2384PLN (561€), 1,2%; MoH no SVR–3097PLN (729€), 1,5%; CoC no SVR–4995PLN (1175 €), 2,4%; DeC–14860PLN (3496€), 7,3%; HCC–38927PLN (9159€), 19,0%; PLT1–30626PLN (7206€), 15,0%; PLT2–19973PLN (4699€), 9,8%. CONCLUSIONS: There is a marked increase of mean annual costs of standard treatment of HCV patients along with disease stage. Assuming that in Poland about 700000 individuals can be infected with HCV, most of them being unaware of the disease, high costs of complications of chronic hepatitis-C are serious social and economic burden. National screening programme with effective antiviral treatment at early stages of disease can reduce this negative impact on society.