Introduction:

Half of the episodes of neonatal sepsis are acquired in the community with a high percentage of mortality and complications.

Objective:

To estimate the direct costs of hospitalizations due to systemic neonatal infection acquired in the community in low-risk newborns.

Materials and methods:

For the estimation of costs, we used the perspective of the health systems and the microcosting technique and we established the duration of hospitalization as the time horizon. We identified cost-generating events through expert consensus and the quantification was based on the detailed bill of 337 hospitalized newborns diagnosed with neonatal infection. The costs of the medications were calculated based on the drug price information system (SISMED) and the ISS 2001 rate manuals adjusting percentage, and the mandatory insurance rates for traffic accidents (SOAT). We used the bootstrapping method for cost distribution to incorporate data variability in the estimate.

Results:

We included the medical care invoices for 337 newborns. The average direct cost of care per patient was USD$ 2,773,965 (Standard Deviation, SD=USD$ 198,813.5; 95% CI: $ 2,384,298 - $ 3,163,632). The main cost-generating categories were hospitalization in intensive care units and health technologies. The costs followed a log-normal distribution.

Conclusions:

The categories generating the greatest impact on the care costs of newborns with infection were hospitalization in neonatal units and health technologies. The costs followed a log-normal distribution.

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