Even if a hospital patient does not have a Clostridium difficile infection, their length of stay can be roughly estimated using the hospital's CDI incidence, according to a study published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.
To test their theory that CDI incidence and patient length of stay were connected, researchers analyzed data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Nationwide Inpatient Sample, from 2009 to 2011. They controlled for hospital characteristics, such as bed size, as well as patient characteristics like age and comorbidities.
The study found inpatient length of stay was significantly longer at hospitals with high CDI incidence. At a hospital level, every percentage point increase in the CDI incidence rate was linked to more than an additional day's stay for patients without a CDI. At the individual level, every percentage point increase in the CDI incidence rate was associated with between 0.6 and 1.05 additional days in the hospital.
According to the study authors, the association between hospital CDI incidence and patient length of stay was stronger than many other commonly used length-of-stay predictors. They concluded, "CDI rates are easy to measure and report and thus may provide an important marker for hospital efficiency and/or quality."
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