Blood Infection Conditions Cost the Most for US Hospitals

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reported in their newest News and Numbers publication that Septicemia, a life threatening illness caused by blood infections with bacterial infections such as E. coli and MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus), is the single most expensive condition that hospitals in the United States had to treat-and pay-for in 2009 (the study year). In fact, it costs about $15.4 BILLION for hospitals to treat!

The report shows that between 2000 and 2009, septicemia hospital stays more than doubled from 337,100 to 836,000 admissions! In 2009, that made it the sixth most common primary cause for hospitalization in the entire United States! This also made the death rate for septicemia to be sixteen-percent for all in-hospital deaths.

 

Particularly, of those infected the elderly accounted for more than half of all patients. Actually, forty percent of the patients were aged between 65 and 84, with about fourteen-percent 85 years and older. Those patients aged 45 to 64 years old were only twenty-seven percent of the hospitalizations, with eleven percent being between 18 and 44 years old, and the last 1.6 percent to be those aged 1 to 17 years old.

 

I had written a few recent blog posts relating to this, and particularly that New York has decreased the rate of infection in recent years. This is something that can be managed and certainly lowered, however the issue with infections are that it cannot entirely be eliminated when there is the human element involved.

 

But what do you think? I would love to hear from you! I welcome your phone call on my toll-free cell at 1-866-889-6882 or you can drop me an e-mail at jfisher@mmolaw.net. You are always welcome to request my FREE book, The Seven Deadly Mistakes of Malpractice Victims, at the home page of my website at www.protectingpatientrights.com.