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Volume 12, Number 5—May 2006
Dispatch

Costs of Surgical Site Infections That Appear after Hospital Discharge

Nicholas Graves*†Comments to Author , Kate Halton*†, Merrilyn Curtis*, Shane Doidge*, David Lairson‡, Marylou McLaws§, and Michael Whitby*
Author affiliations: *The Centre for Healthcare Related Infection Surveillance and Prevention, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; †Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; ‡University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, Texas, USA; §University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Main Article

Table 2

Cost outcomes*

Outcome Mean (SD)
No SSI,
n = 411 SSI,
n = 38
Healthcare services
No. contacts with hospital-based services in 4 wk PD 1.10 (1.68) 1.11 (1.43)
Cost of contacts with hospital-based services in 4 wk PD ($) 40 (60) 40 (52)
No. contacts with community-based services in 4 wk PD 1.85 (2.72) 3.13 (3.04)
Cost of contacts with community-based services in 4 wk PD ($) 62 (103) 105 (111)
No. tests/swabs 0.48 (1.43) 0.71 (1.27)
Costs of tests/swabs ($) 11 (35) 16 (28)
No. of days on antimicrobial drugs during 4 wk PD 0.96 (3.10) 6.76 (8.23)
Costs of antimicrobial drugs 2.16 (9.08) 14.47 (19.96)
Sum of all costs incurred by health care services, excluding costs of readmission ($) 115 (128) 176 (144)
Sum of all costs incurred by health care services, including costs of readmission ($) 417 (3050) 2,361 (8,811)
Production losses
Patient production losses during 4 wk PD (min) 5,237 (5,488) 7,295 (6,349)
Monetary valuation of patient production losses ($) 1,895 (1,986) 2,640 (2,298)
Informal care givers production losses during 4 wk PD 1,630 (2,329) 2,863 (3,168)
Monetary valuation of Informal care giver production losses ($) 590 (843) 1,036 (1,146)
Private costs
Time patient spent accessing hospital services (min) 169 (444) 184 (338)
Time patient spent accessing community-based services (min) 129 (410) 282.76 (528.14)
Total out-of-pocket expenditures during 4 wk PD ($) 5 (19) 4 (21)
SF-12 Physical Component Summary (enrollment) 39.15 (11.76) 37.63 (12.24)
SF-12 Mental Component Summary (enrollment) 50.37 (10.06) 48.87 (10.60)
SF-12 Physical Component Summary (wk 4) 39.03 (8.84) 37.68 (8.04)
SF-12 Mental Component Summary (wk 4) 53.92 (8.35) 52.06 (11.10)

*SSI, surgical site infection; PD, postdischarge; min, minutes of time.

Main Article

Page created: January 12, 2012
Page updated: January 12, 2012
Page reviewed: January 12, 2012
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