Estimating the Costs of Potentially Preventable
Hospital Acquired Complications

California and Maryland hospital data
are used to estimate the incremental cost
associated with 64 categories of hospital
acquired complications. The reason for
admission, severity of illness at admission
and the presence of hospital acquired complications
are used in a linear regression
model to predict incremental per patient
cost yielding an adjusted R2 of 0.58 for
Maryland data and 0.60 for California
data. The estimated incremental cost due
to each of the 64 categories of complications
was consistent across both databases
and accounted for an increase in total short
term acute inpatient hospital cost of 9.39
percent in the California data and 9.63
percent in the Maryland data.