Cost analysis of the empirical antibiotic therapy applied to patients in the intensive care unit in a foundation university hospital in Ankara

As in all businesses, cost analysis has an important place in health care businesses. The most important goal in health business is to obtain the highest level of output with the available input and to use the resources in the most accurate way. By calculating the costs in hospitals and determining the costs of the patients, possessing this information provide the opportunity to the health managers to make more accurate decisions. Even though studies on rational use on antibiotics have been carried out recently in our country, it has been seen that they were not sufficient enough. For this reason, the goal of our study is to calculate the cost of irrational use of antibiotics. The goal of this study is to present the cost of the antibiotics that are arisen from not cutting the antibiotics treatment that is started empirically. According to our research, the cost burden of the extra antibiotic cost of 45 patients whose treatments had been started during 1 year period in Başkent University Surgical and Internal Intensive Care Units and not ended at a proper time, to the Başkent University Hospital is calculated. In our study, the additional cost of irrational use of antibiotics to the antibiotics resistance has been unveiled. It has been aimed to inform the medical doctors on this matter, to follow a rational path on use of antibiotics and to decrease the cost of treatment. Even though the research that is containing 1 year period, the patient data that is added to this study being gathered from only 1 University Hospital and only from twenty-bedded Surgical and Internal Intensive Care Unit causes a limitation to our study, it is clear that with a study that contain a wider universe, the cost would be much more bigger. In conclusion, with the irrational use of antibiotics, an additional cost is arisen, and the medical doctors are informed on this matter.