News: CDC says sepsis cost $14.6B in 2008
June 23, 2011
CDI Strategies - Volume 5, Issue 13
The number of septicemia and sepsis hospitalizations more than doubled between 2000 and 2008, resulting in much longer, costlier hospitals stays, and more problematic and often fatal outcomes for patients with the bloodstream infections, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"Reasons for these increases may include an aging population with more chronic illnesses; greater use of invasive procedures, immunosuppressive drugs, chemotherapy, and transplantation; and increasing microbial resistance to antibiotics. Increased coding of these conditions due to greater clinical awareness of septicemia or sepsis may also have occurred during the period studied," according to the study, Inpatient Care for Septicemia or Sepsis: A Challenge for Patients and Hospitals, a data brief compiled by CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.
Hospitalizations for septicemia or sepsis as a principal diagnosis grew from 326,000 in 2000 to 727,000 in 2008. In the same time span, the rate of the hospitalizations also more than doubled from 11.6 per 10,000 population to 24 per 10,000, and cost an estimated $14.6 billion to treat in 2008, the report said.
Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in HealthLeaders Media, June 22.
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