Epidemiology and Costs of Sepsis in the United States—An Analysis Based on Timing of Diagnosis and Severity Level

Objectives: To characterize the current burden, outcomes, and costs of managing sepsis patients in U.S. hospitals. Design: A retrospective observational study was conducted using the Premier Healthcare Database, which represents ~20% of U.S. inpatient discharges among private and academic hospitals. Hospital costs were obtained from billing records per the cost accounting method used by each hospital. Descriptive statistics were performed on patient demographics, characteristics, and clinical and economic outcomes for the index hospitalization and 30-day readmissions. Setting: Sepsis patient hospitalizations, including inpatient, general ward, and ICU (intermediate and/or step-down). Patients: Adults over 18 years old with a hospital discharge diagnosis code of sepsis from January 1, 2010, to September 30, 2016. Interventions: None. This was a retrospective observational study of deidentified data. Measurements and Main Results: The final study cohort consisted of 2,566,689 sepsis cases, representing patients with a mean age of 65 years (50.8% female). Overall mortality was 12.5% but varied greatly by severity (5.6%, 14.9%, and 34.2%) for sepsis without organ dysfunction, severe sepsis, and septic shock, respectively. Costs followed a similar pattern increasing by severity level: $16,324, $24,638, and $38,298 and varied widely by sepsis present at admission ($18,023) and not present at admission ($51,022). Conclusions: The highest burden of incidence and total costs occurred in the lowest severity sepsis cohort population. Sepsis cases not diagnosed until after admission, and those with increasing severity had a higher economic burden and mortality on a case-by-case basis. Methods to improve early identification of sepsis may provide opportunities for reducing the severity and economic burden of sepsis in the United States. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (CCBY-NC-ND), where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially without permission from the journal. This research was conducted at Premier, Inc. Supported, in part, by Beckman Coulter, Inc. Drs. Paoli and Dr. Reynolds are both employees of and hold stock in Beckman Coulter, Inc./Danaher Corp. (parent company of Beckman Coulter). Dr. Sinha is an employee of Premier, Inc., which received funding to conduct the research project. Dr. Gitlin is an employee of BluePath Solutions, which received funding to conduct the research project, and his institution received funding from Danaher Corp., Diagnostics & Life Science Platforms. Drs. Sinha’s and Crouser’s institutions received funding from Beckman Coulter, Inc. Dr. Crouser has received support from Beckman Coulter, Inc. as a scientific consultant and as principal investigator of a clinical trial investigating a novel sepsis biomarker, and his institution also received funding from the National Institutes of Health and Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research Address requests for reprints to: Carly J. Paoli, PharmD, MPH, Global Health Economics & Reimbursement, Danaher Corp., Diagnostics & Life Science Platforms | Beckman Coulter, 250 S. Kraemer Blvd, Brea, CA 92822. E-mail: cjworden@beckman.com Copyright © by 2018 by the Society of Critical Care Medicine and Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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