Hospital and societal costs of antimicrobial-resistant infections in a Chicago teaching hospital: implications for antibiotic stewardship.

Background: Organisms resistant to antimicrobials continue to emerge and spread. This study was performed to measure the medical and societal cost attributable to antimicrobial-resistant infection (ARI).

Methods: A sample of high-risk hospitalized adult patients was selected.

Patient care seeking barriers and tuberculosis programme reform: a qualitative study.

The patient's perspective, including his/her socio-economic and cultural environment, is an important consideration for tuberculosis control programmes. Through semi-structured interviews, this qualitative research studies the barriers to successful care seeking faced by 202 adult patients with pulmonary tuberculosis in urban Zambia. Three common, interdependent themes explain patient barriers to successful care seeking: (1) number of health care encounters and duration of illness prior to diagnosis; (2) existing financial constraints and additional unrecognized patient costs; and (3) travel distances.