OBJECTIVES: To investigate the association between hospital admission characteristics and the cost of a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)-related hospitalization to understand which admission factors are correlated to cost. METHODS: A regression analysis was applied to the 2012 HCUP National Inpatient Survey database (n_T = 7,137,011, n_COPD = 46,487) to determine if there is an association between admission characteristics and the cost of a COPD hospitalization. After flagging each COPD hospitalization based on the reported diagnosis related group (DRG), a multiple linear regression model was implemented using backwards selection that analyzed a list of the most hypothetically important covariates. Due to the complex survey design of the data and the distribution of the outcome variable, several models were fitted to explore how to best normalize the distribution of the residuals and to satisfy the other regression assumptions. Estimates for the regression coefficients of the final model were computed in SAS 9.3 using the SURVEYREG procedure and included the following variables: length of stay, gender, death during hospitalization, hospital census division, OR procedure, admission on weekend, payment/insurance type, and age at discharge. RESULTS: The final model finds that an absence of an OR procedure (β-hat= -6149.20), hospital census division (β-hat­­ range= (-2845.90, - 1133.95)), and length of stay (β-hat= 1128.90) are the top three factors that are correlated with the cost of a hospitalization. However, the model approximates only half of the variance within the observed data (R= 0.4956). CONCLUSIONS: It is intuitive to infer that an OR procedure and length of stay may have an impact on the cost of an admission; however, this study also finds that the cost varies greatly between census regions. While this model identifies factors that are associated with the cost of a COPD-related hospitalization, further investigation is required to quantify the association more accurately.