Abstract
Healthcare-acquired infections are due to an exposure to pathogens in the hospital setting and tend to occur within 48 h since the admission or within 3 days from the discharge. Nosocomial infections can often be a source of litigation and compensation claims for patient harm. The aim of our study was to compare two different management policies for medical malpractice claims related to healthcare-acquired infections (MMC) adopted in two different tertiary hospitals of Tuscany and Liguria since the year of the choice to fully retain the medico-legal risk. The two endpoints are as follows: i) to compare the operational risk (considered as the resultant of the frequency of MMC, their cost, and the likelihood of economic losses); ii) to verify how much the hospitals would pay if covered by an insurer. The MMC showed different distributions of frequency in the two hospitals, with mean value and variance higher in Florence (FI) than in Genoa (GE). Overall, FI showed a higher mean cost per claim, although the cumulative annual cost was lower, while GE displayed a higher probability of compensation and a more predictable number of events. These differences reflect the impact of the organizational and medico-legal approaches adopted by the two centers.
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