Evidence-based practices critical in infection prevention often require significant adaptation and implementation in hospital settings. A recent study has demonstrated the cost-effectiveness of the Safe Hands and Safe Bladder bundle intervention, a strategy aimed at preventing urinary catheter-associated infections (UC-UTIs) and bladder distension (BD), for patients undergoing hip fracture surgery in Sweden. The program was developed based on a theory-driven knowledge translation approach, implying a co-creation and implementation of evidence-based interventions.
The economic evaluation of these interventions was undertaken through activity-based costing measures to compute the implementation costs, paired with a decision tree model to estimate the bundle’s cost-effectiveness. Health outcomes were primarily assessed based on the adverse events of UC-UTI and BD. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER), a key performance indicator of the economic feasibility of healthcare interventions, was calculated to measure the incremental cost per added infection rate as a proportion of total costs.
The study found that the incidence of patients avoiding BD or UC-UTI increased from 50% to 87% over the duration of the intervention year. The success of these interventions was further affirmed by the identification of cost savings and a reduction in adverse events, marking the intervention as cost-effective. The implementation of the intervention offset a significant portion of the costs attributed to prolonged hospital stays resulting from these adverse events, yielding an overall cost savings of approximately $846 per patient in 2020 compared to before the intervention was introduced.
The adoption of this bundle intervention in units providing care for patients with acute hip fractures demonstrated not only cost-effectiveness but also showcased how strategic collaboration, facilitation, and co-creation processes can optimally utilize limited resources. Future research should investigate the replicate feasibility of these results in other settings and demographics.
The Safe Hands and Safe Bladder intervention provides a promising strategy to prevent adverse events in healthcare, and this economic evaluation substantiates the importance of implementing evidence-based practices in healthcare. The incorporation of both implementation and intervention costs in this analysis provides a comprehensive insight into the real economic impact of such healthcare advancements.
Hospital-acquired adverse events pose a significant challenge to patient safety and healthcare systems globally. Smarter strategic investments in proven interventions such as Safe Hands and Safe Bladder could have profound financial and mortality implications, particularly in high-risk groups such as elderly people undergoing orthopedic surgeries.
Tags: Healthcare Management, Intervention Implementation, Infection Control, Cost-effectiveness Analysis, Evidence-based Practices
Source: https://aricjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13756-025-01573-y