National Estimates of Healthcare Costs Associated With Multidrug-Resistant Bacterial Infections Among Hospitalized Patients in the United States

Abstract

Background: Treating patients with infections due to multidrug-resistant pathogens often requires substantial healthcare resources. The purpose of this study was to report estimates of the healthcare costs associated with infections due to multidrug-resistant bacteria in the United States (US).

Methods: We performed retrospective cohort studies of patients admitted for inpatient stays in the Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare system between January 2007 and October 2015. We performed multivariable generalized linear models to estimate the attributable cost by comparing outcomes in patients with and without positive cultures for multidrug-resistant bacteria. Finally, we multiplied these pathogen-specific, per-infection attributable cost estimates by national counts of infections due to each pathogen from patients hospitalized in a cohort of 722 US hospitals from 2017 to generate estimates of the population-level healthcare costs in the US attributable to these infections.

Results: Our analysis cohort consisted of 16 676 patients with community-onset infections and 172 712 matched controls and 8246 patients with hospital-onset infections and 66 939 matched controls. The highest cost was seen in hospital-onset invasive infections, with attributable costs (95% confidence intervals) ranging from $30 998 ($25 272-$36 724) for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus to $74 306 ($20 377-$128 235) for carbapenem-resistant (CR) Acinetobacter. The highest attributable costs for community-onset invasive infections were seen in CR Acinetobacter ($62 396; $20 370-$104 422). Treatment of these infections cost an estimated $4.6 billion ($4.1 billion-$5.1 billion) in 2017 in the US for community- and hospital-onset infections combined.

Conclusions: We found that antimicrobial-resistant infections led to substantial healthcare costs.

Keywords: antimicrobial resistance; healthcare-associated infections; mortality; veterans.