Post-surgery infections cost a fortune. Health care–associated infections cause 1.7 million extended hospitalizations each year. A study published last week in the Archives of Internal Medicine looked at the clinical and economic costs from these infections which are poorly understood. The researchers looked at national hospital discharge records to find sepsis (blood borne infections) and pneumonia cases- specifically excluding community-acquired infections.
They found that the average extra hospital stay from sepsis after an invasive surgery was about 11 days, costs were about $33,000 extra each, and about 20% of the folks who contracted sepsis died. For pneumonia, the average extra stay was 14 days, cost $46,400, and 11% of patients with pneumonia died.
You can read more in the report and, don’t forget, our final report contains an assessment of infection control activities in AZ and highlights a series of recommendations to improve AZ’s track-record for controlling infections that occur in health care settings.
