Hospital Cost of Sepsis Around the World
SUMMARY
- Sepsis remains one of the costliest hospital conditions.
- Globally, average total hospital costs per patient varies greatly from €1,101 to €91,951.
- The healthcare budget by country spent of sepsis also varied dramatically based on % of GDP.
REVIEW
- Despite being the most frequent and costliest principal diagnosis, accurate estimates of the economic burden of sepsis at a national level is not known.
- Several factors limit the ability to evaluate and compare sepsis expenditures between countries:
- Costs from 1 country cannot be extrapolated to another country
- Existing data is typically outdated
- Sepsis is a major global health priority
- Recently, 20 published studies (16 studies with results) from January 2010 to January 2020 were reviewed to estimate the economic burden of sepsis by country.
- Some countries had more than 1 study.
- The cost ranges within the country ranged by a factor of approximately 4.5
- Similar results were seen with sepsis costs per capita.
-
Sepsis costs in general ward patients are reported to be higher than ICU patients
- General Ward: Median = € 48,993
- ICU: Median = € 22,635 (range 1,555 – 74,245
CONCLUSIONS
- Regardless of the amount spent, treatment of sepsis is consistently expensive globally.
- Intensity of care of individual patients does not reflect the cost of healthcare sepsis expenditures
- General ward costs are greater than ICU costs, most likely due the length of stay being longer on the ward than ICU and a large proportion of patients admitted to the general ward.
To receive articles like these in your Inbox, you can subscribe to Sepsis Program Optimization Insights.
Erkan Hassan is the Co-Founder & Chief Clinical Officer of Sepsis Program Optimization where he designs & oversees the implementation of solutions to optimize sepsis programs.
To discuss your organization’s Barriers of Effective Sepsis Care, contact Erkan by phone (844) 4SEPSIS (844-473-7747), email (erkan@spo.icu), or video chat.