Study assesses economics of in-hospital immunization.

2002 DEC 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A cost-benefit analysis by infectious disease specialists at Cook County Hospital, Chicago, Illinois, suggests that an inner-city hospital's emergency department may be the in-hospital location with the "greatest potential vaccine coverage, at a cost savings in a best-case scenario."

Noting that "[a]dult pneumococcal vaccination rates for persons at risk of developing pneumococcal disease remain below desired levels," the researchers compared three in-hospital locations for potential vaccine coverage of at-risk patients and cost-effectiveness of that coverage: inpatient medicine wards (IMWs), general medicine clinics (GMCs), and emergency departments (EDs).

"We studied a retrospective cohort of 300 patients with pneumococcal bacteremia who had been hospitalized at Cook County Hospital, an inner-city Chicago, public teaching hospital, from January 1994 through December 1998. We measured the presence of risk factors, as defined by the [U.S.] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for developing pneumococcal disease prior to index admission for bacteremia; patient use of ED, GMC, and IMWs from 4 weeks to 5 years before index admission; size of target population for vaccination in each site; and cost benefit of a pneumococcal vaccination strategy at each site," wrote S. Husain and colleagues.

The researchers found that "in the 4 weeks to 5 years before index admission, risk factors were present in 209 patients; 182 ...