Postadmission health care costs varied considerably by the duration of patients’ in-hospital mechanical ventilation, according to a study of Canadian administrative databases.
Critically ill patients in the province of Ontario who received mechanical ventilation for more than 21 days (n = 3,891) had a median health care cost of $42,784 (all costs are in Canadian dollars) in the year after their discharge, compared with $13,005 for patients who were ventilated for 21 or fewer days (n = 78,984), reported Andrea D. Hill, PhD, of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, and her associates (Ann Am Thorac Soc. 2017;14[3]:355-62).
Dr. Hill and her associates also found that patients with longer-term ventilation were less likely to be discharged home (15% vs. 57%) and more likely to be readmitted after 6 months (36% vs. 29%) or 1 year (47% vs. 38%), but were not more likely to have an emergency department visit after 6 months (46% vs. 45%).
All patients received ventilation from April 1, 2002, to March 31, 2013. The population-based cohort study used four databases: the Canadian Institute of Health Information Discharge Abstract Database, the Ontario Health Insurance Plan database, the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System database, and the Ontario Registered Persons Database.