U.S Department of Health and Human Services reports critical need for better prediction of severe sepsis.
The report entitled “National Inpatient Hospital Costs: The Most Expensive Conditions by Payer, 2011” found that the most expensive condition treated in hospitals is sepsis, accounting for $20,3 billion in annual costs to the U.S. healthcare system. In fact, sepsis represented 5.2% of the national costs for all hospitalizations in 2011, resulting in nearly 1.1 million discharges that year from U.S. hospitals.Dr. James O’Brien, Jr., Medical Director of the NGO The Sepsis Alliance, comments the report at www.sepsisalliance.org: “This is reaching the level of a national emergency. Early