Humans, ‘things’ and space: costing hospital infection control interventions

SummaryBackgroundPrevious attempts at costing infection control programmes have tended to focus on accounting costs rather than economic costs. For studies using economic costs, estimates tend to be quite crude and probably underestimate the true cost. One of the largest costs of any intervention is staff time, but this cost is difficult to quantify and has been largely ignored in previous attempts.AimTo design and evaluate the costs of hospital-based infection control interventions or programmes. This article also discusses several issues to consider when costing interventions, and suggests strategies for overcoming these issues.MethodsPrevious literature and techniques in both health economics and psychology are reviewed and synthesized.FindingsThis article provides a set of generic, transferable costing guidelines. Key principles such as definition of study scope and focus on large costs, as well as pitfalls (e.g. overconfidence and uncertainty), are discussed.ConclusionThese new guidelines can be used by hospital staff and other researchers to cost their infection control programmes and interventions more accurately.