Costs associated with community acquired pneumonia in France.

OBJECTIVES: Pneumocost is a prospective study that aimed at documenting the costs of the management of patients hospitalized with a pneumococcal pneumonia and the post-discharge costs during a 6-month period in the French context.
METHODS: Billing data were used to document hospital costs. Resource use during the follow-up period was collected through phone interviews at month 1, 3 and 6. Descriptive statistics and multivariate analyses were performed. We used generalized linear models with log-link functions to estimate parameters associated with hospital and follow-up costs of patients.
RESULTS: Five hundred twenty-four patients were enrolled in 40 public centers from October 2011 to April 2014. Average age was 63 (SD 17); 55.0% of them were male. Average length of stay was 15 days (SD 23). Average cost of stay for the French Sickness Fund was €7293 (SD €7363). Average cost of follow-up was €1242 (SD €3000) and decreased steadily through time. When controlling for patient's socioeconomic characteristics, severity of disease and hospital stay, results showed a concave relationship between hospital costs and age. Obesity, the severity of the disease and comorbidities were associated with constantly increasing inpatient costs. Concerning follow-up costs, we found the same concave relationship with age, while gender, a history of pneumonia and severity of the disease were the most important predictors of high costs after discharge.
CONCLUSION: Pneumocost is the first French study providing a robust estimation of the cost of managing invasive pneumococcal pneumonia in the French context.