1. Excess length of hospital stay due to healthcare acquired infections: methodologies evaluation
- Author
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Giraldi, G., Montesano, M., Sandorfi, F., Iachini, M., and Orsi, G. B.
- Subjects
Hospitalization ,Cross Infection ,Time Factors ,Research Design ,healthcare infection ,cross infection ,length of stay ,costs and cost analysis ,Humans ,Hospital Costs ,Length of Stay - Abstract
Healthcare acquired infections (HAI) cause an increase of burden and in particular excess length of hospital stay (LOS) accounts for approximately up to 90% of total costs. Therefore accurate estimation of extra hospital stay due to healthcare acquired infections is very important.The authors carried out a review comparing the principal methods internationally used for estimating the excess LOS attributable to healthcare acquired infections.The methods described and analysed are: 1) Implicit physician assessment; 2) appropriateness evaluation protocol; 3) unmatched case-control; 4) matched case-control; 5) regression analysis; 6) multistate model. The various methodologies are described underlining advantages and limits which researchers need to know before starting any economic analysis.Overall, studies taking into account the time-dependent nature of HAI show to give more precise and reliable results.
- Published
- 2019