The cost of healthcare-associated infections

04/03/22 • 29 min

Professor Kjeld Møller Pedersen is a health economist and one of the leading experts in estimating the costs of healthcare-associated infections. He is working at the University of Southern Denmark in the Department of Business and Economics and has published more than 400 papers and authored 17 books.
On why it is crucial to prevent healthcare-associated infections:
"People do not realize that we have a surprisingly high number of deaths from healthcare-associated infections. And then we have the human suffering of the survivors too."
On why healthcare-associated infections do not get much attention from decision-makers in healthcare?
"We lack transparency about the consequences and frequency of healthcare-associated infections."
On the cost of the healthcare-associated infections
"A simple way is to look at the number of beds that are used for patients with healthcare-associated infections. That is a considerable number! That number can be turned a monetary value".
"If we want to have the real estimate of healthcare-associated infections, you have to track patients for a considerable period of time, including readmissions and cost for the local communities and the sickness/absence. People will be shocked if we provide the figures on that."
Professor Kjeld Møller Pedersen recommends reading the studies by the Australian Professor and Health Economist Nicholas Graves.

Previous Episode

Kelly Schmidtke on behavioural activation for positive change (United Kingdom)

On the episode is Kelly Schmidtke.
Dr. Kelly Schmidtke is a psychologist and a PhD in experimental psychology. She is currently an assistant professor at Warwick Medical School in England. She is the author of several book chapters and research papers.

On decision making
"Our brain doesn't make decisions, we make decisions, as people. And we have to own our decisions, not cast them off to our brain did all the hard work for us [...] You're the holistic thing."
On population behaviour
"My research drifts more towards population problems, how can we influence population behaviour to drift one direction we deem desirable and stop drifting the other direction we deem undesirable."
On MINDSPACE
"MINDSPACE is an acronym used to describe nine different ways you can nudge people: 1) Messenger, 2) Incentives, 3) Norms, 4) default, 5) salience, 6) priming, 7) Affects, 8) Commitments, 9) Ego these are nine different tools.
On nudging
"A nudge isn't an aspect of our choice environment that exists out there and influences us one way or another. I think a nudge has to be intentionally put there to drift your behaviour in one way or another"
"Fun nudges: "small plates are often recommended to people who try to lose weight. These can work on two levels. 1) perception - visually triggering your mind, 2) practical - you can only get the amount of food (that can be) on the small plate unless you stand up again and refill the plate. This is an example of nudging as long as you're in control of the amount of food. Remember, nudges are supposed to be about your free choice."
"My favourite example of a nudge is like Shore Drive, which is a road in Chicago that has BIG turns that people often miss if they don't pay attention. [...] When you drive, you use the lines as an indicator for how fast you drive, so what they did was shorten the lines, so people would think they drove faster when approaching a turn. Now perceptually, as you drive, it looks for you like you're driving faster, and you'd hit the brakes and drive the appropriate speed through the turn."