Effect of Healthcare-Acquired Infection on Length of Hospital Stay and Cost

Abstract

The existing literature may overstate the costs of healthcare-acquired infection because of bias, and the existing estimates of excess costs may not make intuitive sense to clinicians and policy makers. Accurate estimates of the costs of healthcare-acquired infection should be made and used in appropriately designed decision-analytic economic models (ie, cost-effectiveness models) that will make valid and believable predictions of the economic value of increased infection control.