IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0279239.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Medical cost of acute diarrhea in children in ambulatory care

Author

Listed:
  • Xavier Sánchez
  • Gerardine Leal
  • Angel Padilla
  • Ruth Jimbo

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this study was to estimate the direct medical cost per episode and the annual cost for acute diarrhea (AD) in children under five years of age in Ambulatory Care Centers of the Ministry of Public Health (MOPH) of Ecuador. Methods: A cost of illness study with a provider perspective was carried out through a micro-costing of health resources and valuated in international dollars. Medical consultations and laboratory tests were valued using the tariff framework of services for the National Health System and for the prescribed medications, a reported cost registry of pharmacy purchases made in the year of study was used. Results: A total of 332 electronic health records of children under five years of age were included in the analysis. Laboratory tests were performed on 37.95% (126/332), medications were prescribed to 93.67% (311/332) of the children, and antimicrobials were prescribed to 37.35% (124/332) of the children, representing an antibiotic prescription rate of 26.51% (88/332) and an antiparasitic prescription rate of 10.84% (36/332). The mean cost of the MOPH per child per episode of AD was US$45.24 (2019 dollars) (95% CI:43.71 to 46.76). Conclusion: The total estimated cost of AD in children under five years of age for the MOPH in 2019 was about US$6,645,167.88 million (2019 dollars) (95% CI: 6,420,430.77 to 6,868,436.12). A high proportion of the direct medical cost of AD in children under five years of age in outpatient settings is due to unnecessary laboratory tests.

Suggested Citation

  • Xavier Sánchez & Gerardine Leal & Angel Padilla & Ruth Jimbo, 2022. "Medical cost of acute diarrhea in children in ambulatory care," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(12), pages 1-12, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0279239
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0279239
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0279239
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0279239&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0279239?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0279239. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.