title: Humans, 'things' and space: costing hospital infection control interventions.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Previous attempts at costing infection control programmes have tended to focus on accounting costs rather than economic costs. For studies using economic costs, estimates tend to be quite crude and probably underestimate the true cost. One of the largest costs of any intervention is staff time, but this cost is difficult to quantify and has been largely ignored in previous attempts.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To design and evaluate the costs of hospital-based infection control interventions or programmes. This article also discusses several issues to consider when costing interventions, and suggests strategies for overcoming these issues.
  
  
  METHODS
  Previous literature and techniques in both health economics and psychology are reviewed and synthesized.
  
  
  RESULTS
  This article provides a set of generic, transferable costing guidelines. Key principles such as definition of study scope and focus on large costs, as well as pitfalls (e.g. overconfidence and uncertainty), are discussed.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These new guidelines can be used by hospital staff and other researchers to cost their infection control programmes and interventions more accurately.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, Queensland, Australia. katie.page@qut.edu.au
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Page
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Graves
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Halton
authors.forename: A G
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Barnett
mesh_terms: D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis / Q000379:methods; D003428:Cross Infection / Q000517:prevention & control*; D006801:Humans; D017053:Infection Control / Q000191:economics* / Q000379:methods*