Industry News

Hospital-acquired Clostridioides difficile infection, or HA-CDI, was associated with a 27% increase in attributable costs and 13% increase in hospital length of stay compared with controls in a Canadian study published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.

“This suggests that fewer health care dollars and resources are available to treat and manage other patients due to a largely preventable outcome among hospitalized patients,” Jenine R. Leal, PhD, MSc, infection prevention and control-epidemiologist and senior surveillance consultant at Alberta Health Services, told Infectious Disease News.

In a retrospective, population-based, propensity score-matched cohort study, Leal and colleagues examined admitted adults aged 18 years or older at acute-care facilities in Alberta, Canada, with and without incident HA-CDI between April 1, 2012, and March 31, 2016. To calculate differences in cost, expressed in 2018 Canadian dollars, and length of stay, 98.4% of 2,916 HA-CDI cases were paired with 13,024 noncases.

According to the findings, the overall adjusted cost for HA-CDI cases was 27% greater than noncases (ratio, 1.27; 95% CI, 1.21-1.33). The mean attributable cost of an HA-CDI case was $18,386 (95% CI, $14,312-$22,460), and costs for both cases and noncases were driven by nursing, administration, and overhead costs, the researchers reported. The 13% higher adjusted length of stay among HA-CDI cases (ratio, 1.13; 95% CI, 1.07-1.19) corresponded to an extra 5.6 days in the hospital, the researchers reported.

Read the full Healio article here.