Hospital clostridium difficile infection rates and prediction of length of stay in patients without C. difficile infection

Abstract

background. Inpatient length of stay (LOS) has been used as a measure of hospital quality and efficiency. Patients with Clostridium difficile infections (CDI) have longer LOS. objective. To describe the relationship between hospital CDI incidence and the LOS of patients without CDI. design. Retrospective cohort analysis. methods. We predicted average LOS for patients without CDI at both the hospital and patient level using hospital CDI incidence. We also controlled for hospital characteristics (eg, bed size) and patient characteristics (eg, comorbidities, age). setting. Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Nationwide Inpatient Sample, 2009-2011. patients. The Nationwide Inpatient Sample includes patients from a 20% sample of all nonfederal US hospitals. results. Inpatient LOS was significantly longer (P