BACKGROUND: A delayed diagnosis of @entity378 ( @entity378 ) in the hospital may lead to nosocomial exposure, placing employees and other @entity1 at risk. A lack of prompt infection control measures for suspected cases at the time of admission may require complicated and expensive contact investigations. The purpose of this study was to estimate the @entity1 -hour costs required by infection control staff to investigate a single hospital-based @entity378 exposure. METHODS: Electronic data were extracted from 2 tertiary hospitals and 1 community hospital in a large health care system in metropolitan New York City to identify @entity1907 cases unsuspected at admission. All cases were reviewed by infection prevention and control (IPC) staff to identify exposures. RESULTS: From 2010-2014, 34 @entity1907 cases which necessitated a contact investigation were identified. IPC staff calculated an average of 15-20 hours of work per exposure plus 30 minutes of follow-up for each exposed staff member. For exposures, time from admission to isolation averaged 3.3 days, with a mean of 41 staff exposed per @entity1 and an approximate resource usage of 38 @entity1 -hours. CONCLUSIONS: Contact investigations are costly to the health care system. In a low-prevalence country, such as the United States, it is still important that health care providers are trained to think @entity378 .

Delayed XXXX diagnosis and costs of contact investigations for hospital exposure: New York City, 2010-2014.

@entity1 :: ('9606', 'Species') :: ['patients', 'patient', 'person'] @entity378 :: ('MESH:D014376', 'Disease') :: ['TB', 'tuberculosis'] @entity1907 :: ('MESH:D014397', 'Disease') :: ['pulmonary TB']
@entity378 :: (MESH:D014376,Disease) :: ['tuberculosis']
