Clinical question: What are the effects of isolation precautions on hospital outcomes and cost of care?
Background: Previous studies have found that isolation precautions negatively affect various aspects of patient care, including frequency of contact with clinicians, adverse events in the hospital, measures of patient well-being, and patient experience scores. It is not known how isolation precautions affect other hospital-based metrics, such as 30-day readmissions, length of stay (LOS), in-hospital mortality, and cost of care.
Study design: Multisite, retrospective, propensity score–matched cohort study.
Setting: Three academic tertiary care hospitals in Toronto.
Synopsis: The authors used administrative databases and propensity-score modeling to match isolated patients and nonisolated controls. Researchers included 17,649 control patients, 737 patients isolated for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (contact isolation), and 1,502 patients isolated for respiratory illnesses (contact and droplet isolation) in the study. Patients isolated for MRSA had a higher 30-day readmission rate than did controls (19% vs. 14.7%), a longer average length of stay (11.9 days vs. 9.1 days), and higher direct costs ($11,009 vs. $7,670). Patients isolated for respiratory illnesses had a longer average length of stay (8.5 days vs. 7.6 days) and higher direct costs ($7,194 vs. $6,294). No differences in adverse events rates or in-hospital mortality were observed between control patients and patients in either isolation group.
Some of the differences observed may be from illness severity rather than from the effects of isolation, especially in the MRSA group. There was no difference observed in rates of adverse outcomes, such as falls or medication errors, or in rates of formal patient complaints to the hospital. It is possible that propensity score modeling corrected for unidentified biases in prior studies that found differences in these types of outcomes.
Bottom line: Isolation precautions are associated with higher costs and longer LOS in hospitalized general medicine patients.
Citation: Tran K et al. The effect of hospital isolation precautions on patient outcomes and cost of care: A multisite, retrospective, propensity score-matched cohort study. J Gen Intern Med. 2017;32(3):262-8.
Dr. Wachter is an assistant professor of medicine at Duke University.
