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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 A1

Effect of surgical site infection (SSI) on cost outcomes controlling for multiple confounding factors,* the results of OLS regression estimated with robust standard errors†‡

Outcomes Coeff. on SSI (robust st err) 95% CI lower:upper t p >|t| R2
Costs incurred by healthcare services
No. of contacts with hospital-based services in 4 wk PD 0.44 (0.26) –0.07:0.95 1.71 0.088 0.1996
Cost of contacts with hospital-based services in 4 wk PD ($) 15.73 (9.46) –2.88:34.34 1.66 0.097 0.1971
No. of contacts with community-based services in 4 wk PD 1.36 (0.63)† 0.13:2.59 2.17 0.031 0.185
Cost of contacts with community-based services in 4 wk PD ($) 47.78 (23.07)† 2.38:93.18 2.07 0.039 0.1809
No. of tests/swabs –-0.06 (0.35) –0.75:0.62 -0.19 0.853 0.1656
Costs of tests/swabs ($) –3.52 (8.09) –19.45:12.41 -0.43 0.664 0.1668
No. of days receiving antimicrobial drugs during 4 wk PD 6.46 (1.50)† 3.51:9.41 4.31 >0.001 0.1668
Costs of antimicrobial drugs 14.44 (3.76)† 7.04:21.84 3.84 >0.001 0.2994
Sum of all costs incurred by healthcare services, excluding costs of readmission ($) 74.48 (29.48)† 16.48:132.49 2.53 0.012 0.2056
Sum of all costs incurred by healthcare services, including costs of readmission ($) 123.44 (53.50) 18.17:228.71 2.31 0.022 0.1985
Production losses
Patient production losses during 4 wk PD (min) 699.83 (1,069.22) –1,404.18:2,803.84 0.65 0.513 0.3935
Monetary valuation of patient production losses ($) 253.26 (386.93) –508.15:1,014.67 0.65 0.513 0.3935
Informal care givers' production losses during 4 wk PD (min) 946.42 (579.55) –193.99:2,086.83 1.63 0.103 0.2787
Monetary valuation of informal care giver production losses ($) 342.53 (209.74) –70.19:755.26 1.63 0.103 0.2787
Private costs incurred by patients
Time patient spent accessing hospital services (min) 68.57 (74.28) –77.60:214.73 0.92 0.357 0.1056
Time patient spent accessing community-based services (min) 180.21 (95.38) –7.46:367.89 1.89 0.06 0.1234
Total of out-of-pocket expenditures during 4 wk PD ($) –3.01 (3.06) –9.03:3.02 –0.98 0.327 0.1672
Difference in SF-12 Mental Component Summary (enrollment vs wk 4) –0.59 (2.32) –5.16:3.98 –0.26 0.799 0.1653
Difference in SF-12 Physical Component Summary (enrollment vs wk 4) 0.49 (2.69) –4.81:5.79 0.18 0.855 0.1769

*The coefficient (coeff.) on SSI was estimated after controlling for sex, age, recruiting hospital, length of hospital stay, socioeconomic status, whether patient was in waged employment, salary level, type of surgery (International Classification of Diseases, 10th ed. system), education level, ASA, American Association of Anaesthetists, wound class, duration of surgery, number of coexisting conditions, ethnicity, whether patient was private or public, SF-12, scores at baseline and week 4 postdischarge (PD) (except for the models in which the difference in SF-12 scores is the outcome.
†Statistically significant at the 5% level.
‡OLS, ordinary least squares; robust st err, robust standard error; CI, confidence interval; R2, relative predictive power of model; SF-12, SF-12v2 Health Survey; min, minutes of time.

Main Article

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