Medicare patient sepsis burden rises 40%

In the past seven years, the rate of Medicare beneficiaries hospitalized with sepsis increased 40%, costing Medicare more than $41.5 billion in 2018 alone. An unprecedented study by researchers at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) analyzed data from more than 9.5 million inpatient hospital admissions. According to HHS, “Most patients with sepsis arrived at the hospital with the condition, rather than developing sepsis in the hospital, a possible indicator of success for CMS efforts to reduce hospital-based cases of sepsis. However, two-thirds of these sepsis patients had a medical encounter in the week prior to hospitalization.” The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has implemented an inpatient bundled sepsis measure in its Inpatient Hospital Quality Reporting Program aimed at earlier sepsis detection and treatment. CMS says sepsis patients at organizations following all the steps in the bundle have significantly lower mortality rates. (HHS news release, 2/14/20)