Assessing the opportunity costs of patients with multidrug-resistant organisms in hospitals

摘要

Objectives The concept of opportunity cost can be applied to the utilization of hospital beds with special focus on patients colonized or infected with multidrug-resistant organisms. Blocked beds due to isolation measures or increased length of stay may result in opportunity costs if newly arriving patients have to be rejected and the hospital is confronted with revenue foregone. However, the amount of these costs is unclear, since different approaches are used in the literature to determine the respective costs. Our paper develops a concept to assess opportunity costs from the perspective of a hospital.