The Economic Impact of Staphylococcus aureus Infection in New York City Hospitals

Abstract

We modeled estimates of the incidence, deaths, and direct medical costs of Staphylococcus aureus infections in hospitalized patients in the New York City metropolitan area in 1995 by using hospital discharge data collected by the New York State Department of Health and standard sources for the costs of health care. We also examined the relative impact of methicillin-resistant versus -sensitive strains of S. aureus and of community-acquired versus nosocomial infections. S. aureus-associated hospitalizations resulted in approximately twice the length of stay, deaths, and medical costs of typical hospitalizations; methicillin-resistant and -sensitive infections had similar direct medical costs, but resistant infections caused more deaths (21% versus 8%). Community-acquired and nosocomial infections had similar death rates, but community-acquired infections appeared to have increased direct medical costs per patient ($35,300 versus $28,800). The results of our study indicate that reducing the incidence of methicillin-resistant and -sensitive nosocomial infections would reduce the societal costs of S. aureus infection.

Minimizing the Social Cost of an Epidemic

“…We note that this model leaves open the question of how exactly to determine the parameter c d . This is ongoing work in the medical community; see [4] and [26] for example studies in this area. In future work, we look to incorporate these results into determining the per-time cost of disease, but for the purposes of this paper, we leave it a general parameter of the model.…”

“…This shift in focus is motivated by a growing trend in the medical community to quantify the cost of an epidemic by looking at the direct and indirect medical costs to both the hospitals and doctors treating and immunizing a population, as well as the cost to individuals in the population paying for medical care. See [4] and [26] for two examples of such studies. It is not just within the medical community that a focus on cost of epidemics is emerging.…”

Anti-Alpha-Hemolysin Monoclonal Antibodies Mediate Protection againstStaphylococcus aureusPneumonia

“…This is particularly notable in association with influenza infection, where concomitant staphylococcal pneumonia is often a lethal complication (7,8,12). Up to one-half of staphylococcal pneumonia isolates are classified as methicillin (meticillin)-resistant S. aureus (MRSA), confounding the delivery of appropriate treatment and resulting in reported mortality as high as 56% (1,17,24). The combination of an increasing disease burden and declining potency of traditional antimicrobials to combat S. aureus pneumonia heightens the need for novel prophylactic and therapeutic strategies.…”

Zukünftige Präventions- und Kontrollstrategien in der Krankenhaushygiene

“…So wird insbesondere in den angelsächsischen Ländern diskutiert, ob die primär auf Kontrolle 2 ausgerichteten Strategien ausreichend sind, oder ob der Akzent auf die Etablierung und Umsetzung von Präventions-fektionserreger gegenüber Antibiotika gewinnt Einfluß auf die Letalität und die Mortalität nosokomialer Infektionen [6] und wird zukünftig die Krankenhaushygiene maßgeblich beschäftigen.…”