title: How costs change with infection prevention efforts.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To describe articles since January 2013 that include information on how costs change with infection prevention efforts.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Three articles described only the costs imposed by nosocomial infection and so provided limited information about whether or not infection prevention efforts should be changed. One article was found that described the costs of supplying alcohol-based hand run in low-income countries. Eight articles showed the extra costs and cost savings from changing infection prevention programmes and discussed the health benefits. All concluded that the changes are economically worthwhile. There was a systematic review of the costs of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus control programmes and a methods article for how to make cost estimates for infection prevention programmes.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The balance has shifted away from studies that report the high cost of nosocomial infections toward articles that address the value for money of infection prevention. This is good as simply showing a disease is high cost does not inform decisions to reduce it. More research, done well, on the costs of implementation, cost savings and change to health benefits in this area needs to be done as many gaps exist in our knowledge.
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health and Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: Nicholas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Graves
mesh_terms: D003140:Communicable Disease Control / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D003428:Cross Infection / Q000191:economics / Q000517:prevention & control; D006801:Humans