This study was a unique study of a national economic evaluation of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) that the authors conducted using national hospital data from 2018–2019. They found that over 58,000 bed-days were lost due to HAIs and the associated number of hospital deaths with an estimated £46.4 million inpatient cost in Scotland. This was then extrapolated to £774 million for the UK inpatient costs. Bloodstream infections and pneumonia were the most costly HAI type per case. The total associated costs included direct, cash, and non-cash patient (or carer) costs, but cash costs were minimal at 2.4% of the total due to relatively short duration and low infection treatment costs. These data support the cost-effectiveness of prevention efforts. This resource may be used to inform healthcare leaders and professionals in justifying and locally modeling for HAI prevention and control programs and related investment of IPC nationally.

Manoukian, S., Stewart, S., Graves, N., Mason, H., Robertson, C., Kennedy, S., ... & Reilly, J. (2021). Bed-days and costs associated with the inpatient burden of healthcare-associated infection in the UK. Journal of Hospital Infection, 114, 43–50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhin.2020.12.027