Evaluation of Cost of Nosocomial Infection

Healthcare associated infection (HAI) also known as Nosocomial Infection (NI) is costly to the NHS and distressing to patients. It leads to increased morbidity and mortality, increased length of stay and often requires additional treatments. Information on the impact in terms of additional cost of treatment, reduction in quality of life and cost to society is not fully described. This study will collect epidemiological and economic data on patients with and without HAI and develop a framework around which the cost effectiveness of a range of Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) interventions can be assessed.

The study will be delivered as 4 distinct but overlapping work Phases Phase 1 will describe the incidence of HAI (defined by ECDC case definitions) in an admission cohort. This phase is a surveillance project.

Phase 2: Will describe the impact of HAI on care in hospital -as many patients as possible who acquired HAI and twice as many non-HAI comparators will be recruited. Patients or their guardians or nearest relative will be told about the study and asked if they are willing to provide consent to complete a number of questionnaires. This phase will include case note review by ECONI research nurses and a patient questionnaire.

Phase 3: Will investigate the impact of HAI on patient care post discharge (use of Health and Social Care resources outside of Hospital), Quality of Life and personal expenses) - questionnaire to patients to ask about impact on their overall health and wellbeing and personal expenses. This will involve patients completing a paper questionnaire at one, three, six and twelve months after they have been discharged from hospital. This phase will include a nested qualitative study which will interview 20-30 patients who acquired HAI to further investigate the impact of HAI on their lives and livelihoods Phase 4: This phase will not involve any patient interaction. It will develop a framework to support modelling for decision making for future investment in Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) based on data collected within Phase one to three above. The information collected during the first three phases will be used to model possible outcomes of infection prevention and control measures. This will be a modelling exercise using data collected within Phase 1, 2 and 3 and the protocol for this work will be described elsewhere.

Phase 2 and 3 will be a cohort of as many patients as possible with HAI and a sample of non-HAI patients (twice the number of HAI patients) who consent to participate in the study within the year of recruitment.