Abstract:

A nosocomial infection is an important cause that increases the mortality rate, hospitalization duration, and costs. This descriptive and retrospective study was conducted to compare the costs of nosocomial infections in adult patients in surgical, internal, and intensive care clinics and their clinical, diagnosis, and admission types. 149 cases of nosocomial infections that developed in 2018 in a hospital with 905 beds are within the scope of the study. The data in the “Infection Surveillance Follow-Up Form” were calculated by recording the days of hospitalization, medication, laboratory, radiology consultation, and total costs of the cases. In variables, the Mann-Whitney U test was used for two independent groups and the Kruskal Wallis-H test was used for more than two groups. The average age of the patients is 72. Of these, 93% of the patients developed the infection during the hospitalization, and 52.4% of them died due to nosocomial infection. While ventilator-associated events were responsible for deaths, the most important risk was invasive catheter applications. While the invoiced total cost together as the main diagnosis and nosocomial infection is 2,079,925 dollars, the total cost of hospital infection alone is 652,838 dollars (1/3). The average cost of nosocomial infections per patient was determined to be 4,381 dollars. Nosocomial infections increased treatment costs by 45.7%, approximately 1.5 times. The costs in groups with intensive care clinics, emergency services, and LRTI diagnoses were found to be significantly higher than the other groups. In order to minimize these preventable deaths and costs, a national data bank should be established to record all kinds of attempts and costs for the treatment and follow-up of nosocomial infections. More effective feedback and training can be provided to healthcare workers to be aware of the importance of nosocomial infections on human health and costs, and especially invasive risk factors.

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