Use of the Appropriateness Evaluation Protocol for Estimating the Incremental Costs Associated with Nosocomial Infections

Existing methods for estimating additional days of hospital stay due to nosocomial infections (NI) have a number of documented limitations. An alternative method described in this paper uses the Appropriateness Evaluation Protocol (AEP) to determine whether each day of acute inpatient care is approp...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Medical care 1987-06, Vol.25 (6), p.481-488
Main Authors: Wakefield, Douglas S., Pfaller, Michael A., Hammons, Glenn T., Massanari, R. Michael
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cost estimates
Costs and Cost Analysis - methods
Cross Infection - economics
Estimation methods
Evaluation Studies as Topic
Health care costs
Health Services Research - methods
Hospital administration
Hospital costs
Hospitalization
Hospitalization - economics
Humans
Infections
Length of stay
Length of Stay - economics
Medical records
Propriety
Staphylococcal Infections - economics
United States
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Existing methods for estimating additional days of hospital stay due to nosocomial infections (NI) have a number of documented limitations. An alternative method described in this paper uses the Appropriateness Evaluation Protocol (AEP) to determine whether each day of acute inpatient care is appropriate based on the need for care of the NI, original cause of hospitalization (OC), or combined NI-OC requirements. Using this method to identify specific days of hospitalization due to Staphylococcus aureus nosocomial infection, we find: 1) length of stay is increased for only a minority of patients (38%); 2) an average of 20 additional days of stay occurred for patients with 1 or more days attributed to NI; and 3) an average of 52% of length of stay of patients with 1 or more days attributed to NI can be attributed to the NI. Application of the AEP-based method is a useful alternative for identifying additional days of stay due to NI.
ISSN:0025-7079
1537-1948
DOI:10.1097/00005650-198706000-00003