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Health Care Costs and Mortality Associated with Nosocomial Diarrhea Due to Clostridium difficile

  1. Lorraine Kyne1,
  2. Mary Beth Hamel2,
  3. Rajashekhar Polavaram3, and
  4. Ciarán P. Kelly3
  1. 1Divisions of Gerontology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
  2. 2Divisions of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care, Boston, Massachusetts
  3. 3Divisions of Gastroenterology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
  1. Reprints or correspondence: Dr. Lorraine Kyne, Gerontology Div., Rabb 440, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, 330 Brookline Ave., Boston, MA 02215 (lkyne{at}caregroup.harvard.edu).
 
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Abstract

A total of 271 patients were prospectively followed up to determine whether patients whose hospital stay is complicated by diarrhea due to Clostridium difficile experience differences in cost and length of stay and survival rates when compared with patients whose stay is not complicated by C. difficile–associated diarrhea. Forty patients (15%) developed nosocomial C. difficile–associated diarrhea. These patients incurred adjusted hospital costs of $3669—that is, 54% (95% confidence interval [CI], 17%–103%)—higher than patients whose course was not complicated by C. difficile–associated diarrhea. The extra length of stay attributable to C. difficile–associated diarrhea was 3.6 days (95% CI, 1.5–6.2). C. difficile–associated diarrhea was not associated with excess 3-month or 1-year mortality after adjustment for age, comorbidity, and disease severity. On the basis of the findings of this study, a conservative estimate of the cost of this disease in the United States exceeds $1.1 billion per year.

Clostridium difficile is a major cause of antibiotic-associated diarrhea and colitis [1]. The incidence of infection with this organism is increasing in hospitals worldwide, consequent to the widespread use of broad-spectrum antibiotics [2]. In a recent study, we found that 31% of patients who received antibiotics in acute care medical wards were colonized with C. difficile, and 56% of these patients developed C. difficile–associated diarrhea (hereafter referred to as “C. difficile diarrhea”) [3].

Although the clinical and financial impact of nosocomial C. difficile infection is believed to be significant, the reported extra costs and extra length of stay attributable to infection with this organism vary widely [4–9]. Similarly, mortality rates associated with C. difficile diarrhea in observational and case control studies range from 0.6% to 83% [10–15]. Moreover, the effect of the severity of underlying disease and comorbidity on health care costs or mortality has been poorly defined.

A valid estimate of the financial and clinical burden of diarrhea due to C. difficile would help in the evaluation of the potential benefits, in terms of health expenditure and survival, of new therapies or preventative measures to control the disease. By use of a prospective cohort study design, the aim of this study was to determine the association between hospital costs, length of stay, and mortality associated with nosocomial C. difficile diarrhea.

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Methods

Patients. Data for this analysis were collected as part of a prospective study of nosocomial acquisition of C. difficile. A full description of the primary objectives and the design of this study has been published elsewhere [3]. In brief, patients who were consecutively admitted to either of 2 general medical wards from 5 January 1998 through 22 May 1998 with infections that required treatment with antibiotics were eligible for enrollment in the study. Patients were excluded if they were not receiving antibiotics. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and informed consent was obtained from eligible patients or their health care proxies.

Study protocol. At study entry, we recorded patient age, sex, race, and admission diagnosis. The severity of the primary condition that led to hospitalization was assessed clinically by use of a modified Horn's index and rated as “mild” (1 point), “moderate” (2 points), “severe” (3 points), or “extremely severe” (4 points) [16, 17]. Assessments were made by an experienced geriatrician (L.K.) and by a doctor directly responsible for the care of the patient. Agreement between these raters was excellent (κ > 0.90). A Charlson comorbidity index, which assesses information on coexistent diseases other than the primary diagnosis, was also obtained [18]. Admitting diagnosis was categorized into 5 categories depending on the body site or system infected, as follows: pulmonary infection (including respiratory tract infections and pneumonia); gastrointestinal infection (including peritonitis, diverticulitis, pancreatitis, ulcerative colitis, and cholangitis); urological infection (including urinary tract infections and pyelonephritis); skin, soft-tissue, or bone infection (including cellulitis and osteomyelitis); and miscellaneous infections (including infections of the CNS and cardiovascular system).

Patients were followed up throughout their hospital stay and assessed for the development of C. difficile diarrhea. Stool samples were obtained on the day of admission and every 3 days thereafter; they were tested for the presence of toxigenic C. difficile by culture and by tissue culture cytotoxicity (toxin B) testing. “C. difficile diarrhea” was defined as antibiotic-associated diarrhea (a change in bowel habit with ⩾3 unformed bowel movements per day for ⩾2 days) not attributed to any other cause that occurred in association with a positive stool cytotoxin test result for C. difficile [3, 19]. Other infectious causes of diarrhea were excluded by use of the appropriate stool tests. The “time at risk for C. difficile diarrhea” was defined as the length of stay before colonization for patients who developed C. difficile diarrhea and the total length of stay for patients who did not develop C. difficile diarrhea. Patients or their surrogates were interviewed at 90 days after discharge from the hospital. Data on survival beyond this point were obtained by intermittently contacting patients or their surrogates for up to 1 year after discharge.

Cost estimates. Total hospital charges were collected from the hospital's billing system. Hospital costs were estimated by adjusting charges by using the overall Medicare cost-to-charge ratio for our institution. We estimated the mean hospital costs attributable to each case of C. difficile diarrhea by taking a weighted average of the total hospital costs for patients admitted with the primary diagnosis of C. difficile diarrhea and of the excess hospital costs attributable to C. difficile diarrhea for patients hospitalized with infections whose course was complicated by C. difficile diarrhea. (Excess costs were estimated from multivariable models, as described in the statistical analysis subsection below.) We calculated the percentage of admissions to our hospital that involved treatment of C. difficile diarrhea. We used data from the American Hospital Association to determine the number of admissions to hospitals in the United States each year. On the basis of these estimates, we calculated the total annual hospital costs attributable to the management of C. difficile diarrhea by using the following equation: average cost per case of C. difficile diarrhea × percentage of hospitalized patients who required treatment for C. difficile diarrhea × total number of admissions to hospitals in the United States per year.

These estimates only include hospital costs and do not include doctors' costs or the costs of posthospital care of C. difficile diarrhea; therefore, they conservatively estimate the actual costs.

Statistical analysis. The primary independent variable was C. difficile diarrhea. The outcomes (dependent variables) that we analyzed included estimated hospital costs, total length of hospital stay, and all-cause mortality. We used Wilcoxon rank-sum tests to compare the costs and the length of stay of patients whose hospital stay was complicated by C. difficile diarrhea and those whose stay was not complicated by C. difficile diarrhea. We analyzed the associations between other potential confounding variables (age, Charlson comorbidity score, disease severity [Horn's index], sex, race, and diagnosis) and costs and length of stay by Spearman correlation coefficients or Kruskal-Wallis tests, as appropriate. Single predictor Cox proportional-hazards regression models were developed for C. difficile diarrhea and other baseline characteristics to determine the effect of these variables on the risk of death per unit time (the hazard ratio).

To analyze the independent effect of C. difficile diarrhea on hospital costs and length of stay, we used linear regression analyses. Cost and length of stay analyses were based on log-transformed data because of skew in the distribution of these data. In each analysis, we adjusted for age, Charlson comorbidity score, disease severity (Horn's index), sex, race, and diagnosis. Collinearity between variables in each model was assessed by examining the tolerance and variance inflation factor for each independent variable [20]. The normality of each model's residuals was also checked.

Antilogs of the regression coefficients associated with indicator variables were used to calculate the adjusted costs and lengths of stay attributable to C. difficile diarrhea and to adjustment variables. We used Cox proportional-hazards regression analyses to determine the independent effect of C. difficile diarrhea on 1-year mortality and to calculate the adjusted hazard ratio for death while controlling for age, Charlson comorbidity score, disease severity (Horn's index), sex, race, and diagnosis. All analyses were performed with SAS software, version 6.12 (SAS Institute). The α level was set at 0.05. All P values were 2-sided.

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Results

Patient characteristics. We enrolled 271 patients. Of these, 47 patients (17%) had C. difficile diarrhea. For 7 of these patients, the sole reason for hospitalization was for management of C. difficile diarrhea. The mean age of these patients (2 women and 5 men) was 72 years (range, 41–90 years). Their median length of hospital stay was 7 days (range, 3–24 days), and the median estimated total cost of their hospitalization was $7400 (range, $2984–$34,860). Two (28.6%) of these 7 patients died within 3 months of discharge. To evaluate the extra costs, length of stay, and mortality associated with C. difficile diarrhea that complicated a hospitalization for infection, we excluded these 7 patients from all subsequent analyses.

Demographic and clinical characteristics of the remaining study cohort are shown in table 1. The mean patient age was 74 years; 158 patients (60%) were women, and 88 patients (33%) had severe to extremely severe disease at the time of admission to the hospital.

Table 1
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Table 1

Baseline characteristics of the study cohort of 264 patients.

Cost estimates. In the unadjusted analysis (table 2), estimated hospital costs for patients whose hospital stay was complicated by C. difficile diarrhea were twice as high as those for patients whose hospital stay was not complicated by C. difficile diarrhea. Other factors that were associated with significantly higher unadjusted hospital costs included younger age, nonwhite race, higher scores on the Charlson comorbidity index, and increasing severity of underlying disease at admission. Hospital costs did not differ significantly according to sex or admitting diagnosis.

Table 2
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Table 2

Univariate analyses of factors associated with hospital costs for 264 patients in the study cohort.

In a multivariable linear regression model (table 3), we found that the independent predictors of increased hospital costs included disease severity and course complicated by C. difficile diarrhea. The adjusted estimated hospital cost for a typical patient whose course was complicated by C. difficile diarrhea was $10,489. This was $3669 (95% CI, $1126–$7024)—that is, 54% (95% CI, 17%–103%)—higher than the adjusted hospital cost for a typical patient whose course was not complicated by C. difficile diarrhea ($6820).

Table 3
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Table 3

Independent association between Clostridium difficile diarrhea and estimated hospital costs, determined by use of a multivariable linear regression model.

The mean cost per case of C. difficile diarrhea was $4657, and 63 (0.7%) of all 9091 persons who were admitted to our institution required treatment of C. difficile diarrhea. In 1999, there were 34,180,563 admissions to hospitals in the United States [21]. On the basis of these figures, we estimated that the total annual cost for treating C. difficile diarrhea in hospitals in the United States exceeds $1.1 billion.

Length of hospital stay. The median time at risk for patients who developed C. difficile diarrhea (6 days; range, 1–36 days) was similar to that for those who did not develop C. difficile diarrhea (5 days; range, 3–48 days; P = .81). In the unadjusted analysis (table 4), the median total length of hospital stay for patients whose course was complicated by C. difficile diarrhea was 7 days longer than that for patients who did not develop C. difficile diarrhea. The median length of hospital stay also increased proportionally with the severity of underlying disease at admission.

Table 4
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Table 4

Univariate analyses of factors associated with length of hospital stay (LOS) for 264 patients in the study cohort.

After adjustment for age, sex, race, comorbidity score, and admitting diagnosis, disease severity and course complicated by C. difficile diarrhea were found to be independent predictors of increased length of hospital stay (table 5). The estimated adjusted length of stay for a typical patient whose course was complicated by C. difficile diarrhea was 10.2 days. This was 3.6 days (95% CI, 1.5–6.2)—that is, 55% (95% CI, 23%–94%)—longer than the adjusted length of stay for a typical patient whose course was not complicated by C. difficile diarrhea (6.6 days).

Table 5
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Table 5

Independent association between Clostridium difficile diarrhea and length of hospital stay (LOS) in days, determined by use of a multivariable linear regression model.

Patient mortality. By 3 months after admission, 19 (48%) of 40 patients whose course was complicated by C. difficile diarrhea had died, compared with 49 (22%) of 224 patients whose course was not complicated by C. difficile diarrhea (P = .001). The unadjusted difference in 1-year survival rates for the 2 groups was also significant (P = .0027; table 6). Other predictors of death in the unadjusted analysis included higher scores on the Charlson comorbidity index and severe to extremely severe disease severity (table 6).

Table 6
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Table 6

One-year mortality rates associated with Clostridium difficile diarrhea.

The results of the Cox proportional hazards regression analysis are shown in table 6. After adjustment for age, race, comorbidity score, disease severity, and other relevant covariates, C. difficile diarrhea was not considered to be an independent predictor of death.

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Discussion

In this prospective study of 271 patients admitted to the hospital with infection, 40 patients (15%) developed C. difficile diarrhea. C. difficile diarrhea was associated with an increase in estimated total hospital costs of $3669—that is, a 54% increase (95% CI, 17%–103%)—and an increase in length of hospital stay of 3.6 days—that is, a 55% increase (95% CI, 23%–94%). The crude mortality rate for patients with C. difficile diarrhea was higher than that for patients without C. difficile diarrhea; this was explained by the increased severity of underlying disease at admission to the hospital for patients with C. difficile diarrhea.

The association between the use of health care resources and C. difficile diarrhea has been examined by other investigators [4, 6–8, 22]. In an earlier observational study of surgical patients treated in our institution, Kent et al. [22] reported that patients who developed C. difficile diarrhea stayed in the hospital almost twice as long as did patients who did not develop C. difficile diarrhea. However, in that study, the length of stay was not corrected for confounding variables. In case-control studies performed in Europe and Australia, C. difficile diarrhea has also been associated with prolonged hospitalization [5–8, 23]. Up to a 4-fold increase in total length of stay has been reported elsewhere [7]. By use of a prospective case-control study design, Wilcox et al. [8] in the United Kingdom estimated that the increased cost of C. difficile infection exceeded £4000 per case; the majority of this extra cost was attributable to the extra days that were spent in the hospital.

Duration of hospital stay is also reported to be a risk factor for C. difficile diarrhea [24]. In our study, we found that the length of stay before the onset of C. difficile diarrhea was almost identical to the total length of stay for patients who did not develop C. difficile diarrhea. Because the time at risk was similar, it seems likely that the excess length of stay that we report is a consequence rather than a cause of C. difficile diarrhea.

In the United States, excess health care expenditure attributable to C. difficile infection has been poorly defined, but in one retrospective observational study by Kofsky et al. [4], hospital charges associated with the diagnosis and treatment of C. difficile diarrhea in a community hospital amounted to $2000 per patient. However, this study involved patients hospitalized >10 years ago; therefore, it may not reflect current practices.

Our study contributes to previous research in this area in several ways. First, we were able to perform detailed adjustment for age, sex, race, admitting diagnosis, severity of underlying disease, and comorbidity. This enabled us to isolate the independent effect of C. difficile diarrhea on hospital costs and length of stay. Although some earlier case-control studies have attempted to match by age, sex, or underlying diagnosis, most of these previous studies were not able to incorporate such detailed clinical data on strong predictors of resource use [7, 8, 23]. Second, by use of a prospective cohort study design, we were able to eliminate many potential biases associated with retrospective matched studies. Finally, we analyzed estimated hospital costs rather than hospital charges. Although our method of estimating costs, which involves the cost-to-charge ratio, is subject to unknown bias because of cost shifting, we feel that this method gives a truer estimate of the costs potentially saved by preventing nosocomial C. difficile diarrhea than do estimates based solely on hospital charges [25].

The crude 3-month mortality rate associated with nosocomial C. difficile diarrhea (48%) was high in our study population, and it differed significantly from that of patients who did not develop C. difficile diarrhea (22%). The 2 groups also differed significantly with regard to 1-year unadjusted survival rates. Higher crude mortality rates have been reported elsewhere in selected populations [11, 12, 14, 15, 26]. In one study of nursing homes residents, Thomas et al. [15] reported a 12-month mortality rate of 83% for patients with C. difficile infection; for patients who were not infected, the rate was 50%. In studies that have matched control patients to case patients according to underlying illness, the results concerning mortality attributable to C. difficile diarrhea have been conflicting. In 1989, Eriksson and Aronsson [23] reported a 3-fold increase in mortality rate among patients with C. difficile diarrhea, as compared with control patients who had been matched by age, sex, and underlying disease. However, more recently, MacGowan et al. [6] reported that the mortality rate for patients with C. difficile diarrhea did not differ from that for control patients who were well matched in terms of infective diagnosis, severity of illness, and coexistent diseases.

Severity of illness, whether assessed clinically or by use of rating scales, has been shown to be an important predictor of mortality for a wide variety of conditions [17, 27–29]. We were able to document severity of illness and to record comorbidities for all patients at admission to the hospital. In our cohort, we found that the patients who developed C. difficile diarrhea were more likely to be severely to extremely severely ill at admission (P = .001). By using survival-analysis methods, we were able to adjust for this important baseline characteristic; consequently, we found that C. difficile diarrhea was not an independent predictor of death. Our findings add validity to the observations made by other investigators that mortality associated with C. difficile diarrhea is almost always related to underlying disease processes, and that infection with this organism is a general marker of poor outcome [6, 10, 30, 31].

Our study had several limitations. The estimates of hospital costs, length of stay, and survival were obtained by use of data from 1 academic medical center. Although we acknowledge that clinical outcomes and use of health care resources for patients treated at other centers may be different, we believe that our data are relevant to other teaching hospitals in the United States and that they reflect current practices. We limited our study to a cohort of medical patients who were being treated with antibiotics for infections. Because these are the patients at highest risk for C. difficile diarrhea, we feel that our results are clinically relevant [1, 3, 32, 33]. Our cost estimates did not include doctors' fees or the cost of treatment of C. difficile diarrhea after discharge. In this study, 13 (33%) of the 40 patients with C. difficile diarrhea had recurrent diarrhea after discharge, and 46% of those with 1 recurrent episode had an additional recurrence. Because the majority of our patients were elderly and 77% of those with C. difficile diarrhea were discharged to nursing homes, it is likely that our results represent underestimations of the true medical costs associated with nosocomial C. difficile diarrhea.

Despite these acknowledged limitations, our findings reveal that nosocomial C. difficile diarrhea is associated with a significant economic burden. In our institution, we found that the incidence of C. difficile diarrhea was 0.7%. This incidence rate is consistent with rates reported from other institutions, which range from 0.05% to 3% [34]. We estimated that the overall annual cost of management of C. difficile diarrhea in the United States is likely to exceed $1.1 billion. The increased costs appear to be directly related to the increase in the length of stay. Although the former provides a measure of the direct economic losses attributable to nosocomial C. difficile diarrhea, the information on extra days provides an estimate of the opportunity costs associated with the loss of new admissions and their associated diagnostic-related group charges because of beds remaining occupied by patients with C. difficile diarrhea [25]. The crude mortality rate associated with C. difficile diarrhea is high, but this reflects the general poor health of patients at highest risk of acquiring this disease.

The current approach to management of C. difficile diarrhea involves treatment with metronidazole or vancomycin and careful attention to infection control issues. A variety of new, nonantibiotic approaches to prevention and management of C. difficile diarrhea have been proposed. These include the use of probiotic agents, such as Lactobacillus species or Saccharomyces boulardii; the use of toxin-binding and neutralizing agents; and active or passive immunization with a toxoid vaccine or antibody products [35–40]. Our results provide data that may be used in cost-effectiveness studies of potential new therapies. More importantly, our results highlight the potential savings associated with preventing nosocomial C. difficile diarrhea and justify the use of additional resources to control this prevalent hospital-acquired infection.

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Footnotes

  • Financial support: National Institutes of Health grants AG00971 (to L.K.) and AG00755 (to M.B.H.); career development award from the Paul Beeson Faculty Scholars in Aging Research Program (to M.B.H.).

  • Received July 17, 2001.
  • Revision received August 27, 2001.
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  1. Clin Infect Dis. (2002) 34 (3): 346-353. doi: 10.1086/338260
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