Hospital acquired infections (HAIs) can affect up to 10% of hospital inpatients, and cost the NHS £1,000,000,000 (£1bn) every year.1,2
Coupled with the emergence of increasingly antibiotic-resistant strains of common organisms, HAI is becoming more and more of a problem.
The additional cost of a single case of Clostridium Difficile was estimated at £4000 over a decade ago3, while the additional cost per case of bloodstream HAI is over £6200.2
HAI extends hospital stay by an average of 11 extra days, and patients with HAI are 7 times more likely to die in the hospital than uninfected patients (after controlling for patient characteristics such as age, sex, diagnosis, admission speciality and type and pre-existing illness).1