Economic Impact Of Early Report And Management Of Bacteremia By Internal Medicine In A Secondary Care Hospital

Objectives: To analyze the impact of early warning of bacteremia in the mean hospital stay and the cost savings that this strategy entails.Material and Methods: We developed a cohort study at Hospital General La Mancha Centro, confronting data from 166 patients with early report of clinically relevant bacteremia in 2010, with those of 128 positive blood cultures obtained in 2009 in which early report strategy was not applied.Results: The mean hospital stay in 2010 applying the early report strategy was 19.47 days and the mean stay in 2009 was 28.67 days. There was a mean difference of 9,2 days favouring early report of bacteremia conducted throughout 2010 (p = 0.032). The mean cost of hospital stay at our center for all services, excluding Paedriatics and Intensive Care Unit, is 650 euro/day. Therefore, the cost-saving benefit obtained per patient amounts to 5.980 euro.Conclusions: Early notice and internist management of clinically relevant blood cultures decreases length of hospital stay, which is an important economic saving.