PIN116 THE BURDEN OF INFLUENZA POSITIVE INPATIENTS IN TURKEY

Abstract

Respiratory viral infections, primarily influenza, can be one of the most important reasons of hospitalization, resource utilization and spendings during the influenza season. We aimed to demonstrate the expenditures of inpatients who were diagnosed to have influenza in a cohort of hospitalized patients. Patients hospitalized in internal medicine wards and who had nasal swab sampling for a suspected viral infection were included between 1 August 2018 to 31 March 2019. Patients were followed until discharge or exitus. Hospital spendings were retrieved from the Hospital Information Management System. Data of 254 patients with 262 hospitalization episodes were analyzed, 125 patients (47,7%) were infected with at least one viral pathogen. Median age was 63,7 years and length of stay was 17 days (5-160 days). 53,1% of the patients were admitted from the emergency room. The total hospital spending of the inpatients was 4,168,094 TRY. Half of this expenditure was pharmaceutical expenditure (2,023,071 TRY). Mean expenditure per patient was 16,410 TRY. Twenty-one percent of the patients were diagnosed to have influenza, median length of stay was 15 days (5-160 days), mortality was 10,9% and their total expenditure was 966.984 TRY (17.581 TRY per patient). Influenza is an important cause of hospitalization and severe illness, and it results in substantial economic burden, due to both medical care costs and productivity loss. There is lack of data about the economic burden of influenza in Turkey. We showed that the expenditure per patient was higher for patients infected with influenza. Pharmaceutical expenditures constituted the major group of spending in accordance with other studies.