Medical Services - Economic Implications of Surgical Wound Infections. A Comparative Study

Abstract

Infections associated with the medical and the surgical acts are an important public health problem and quality of medical services, with certain economic implications. Losses from the health state budget are explained by prolonging hospitalization, staff costs, costs of antibiotics, medical tests, and investigations. The present study aims to highlight the importance of avoidable medical costs by reviewing comparative financial data from the national and international literature. The article presents the cost of surgical wound infections comparatively with specific financial data for states such as USA, Germany, UK, Austria, France, Australia and India. In Romania there is an incidence of hospital acquired infections between 1% -3% of cases solved. In the European Union, under the influence of legal provisions, the incidence of these infections is between 5% and 15%. Romania, as a Member State of the European Union, will have to comply with reporting requirements for this type of infection (according to the Decision 2119 /98/ EC) and will have to make legislative proposals for economic analyses on medical services and their quality. The case study represents an economic approach of a case of surgical wound infection in a public hospital in Sibiu County (Romania). In Romania there are no financial data available in this field, aspect which will give originality of this paper.