OBJECTIVES: Peripheral lower-extremity diseases (PLE), kidney diseases, and coronary atherosclerosis are three important diabetes complications. Their incremental costs to diabetes-related hospitalization haven’t been thoroughly examined in previous studies. This study explores the presence and severity of these three complications on diabetes-related hospitalization costs. METHODS: A retrospective analysis of the 2010 – 2012 National Inpatient Sample (NIS). Diabetes-related hospitalization was defined by principal and secondary diagnosis of diabetes (250.XX). Hospitalization costs were obtained by adjusting the total hospitalization charge by the hospital-specific cost-to-charge ratio and were adjusted to the 2012 dollar by medical CPI. The presence and severity of these three complications were identified by diagnosis codes, procedure codes and DRG. Stratified random matching was adopted to make the cohorts with/without each of the three complications comparable. Generalized linear model (GLM) was used to analyze the association between diabetes complications and hospitalization costs. The statistical significance level was p-value 0.0001. RESULTS: