Key result
Post-operative surgical wound infections after open heart surgery doubled mean hospital costs ($25,957 vs $12,795, p=0.0002) and caused an average net loss of $2,344 per patient.
Why the study?
Does post-operative surgical wound infection increase hospital costs and length of stay in patients undergoing open heart surgery?
Case-Control
Does post-operative surgical wound infection increase hospital costs and length of stay in patients undergoing open heart surgery?
Absolute Event Rate: 25957% vs 12795%
p-value: p=0.0002
Postoperative wound infections after open heart surgery significantly increase hospital length of stay and costs, resulting in substantial financial losses for hospitals under the prospective payment system.
May raise costs after cardiac surgery; case-control data leave open whether prevention improves economics.
Of the more than 200,000 patients who undergo open heart surgery annually in the United States, 2% to 10% will develop a post-operative infection related to their surgery. The economic impact of such infections on hospitals under the prospective payment system is unclear. To study the effect of such infections on hospital costs and reimbursement patterns, we compared case patients with controls of similar age, sex, urgency of surgery and type of surgery. The postoperative stay for cases was significantly longer than for matched controls (26.8 days and 8.3 days, respectively; p = .0002). The mean hospital cost for case admissions ($25,957) was twice as high as for control admissions ($12,795) (p = .0002). Cases resulted in an average net loss to the hospital of $2,344 per patient, while controls yielded an average net gain of $3,196 per patient (p = .02). We conclude that hospitals have substantial financial incentives to minimize the incidence of postoperative wound infections associated with open heart surgery.
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Boyce et al. (1990) conducted a case-control in Surgical wound infections following open heart surgery. Post-operative surgical wound infection vs. Matched controls without infection was evaluated on Mean hospital cost (p=0.0002). Post-operative surgical wound infections after open heart surgery doubled mean hospital costs ($25,957 vs $12,795, p=0.0002) and caused an average net loss of $2,344 per patient.
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