According to a research letter published in the August 2019 issue of JAMA Pediatrics, treating severe sepsis in children in the United States cost $7.31 billion in 2016 alone, up significantly from the estimated $4.8 billion it cost in 2005. The 2016 amount is 12 times the median cost of all other hospitalizations for children, including for treating cancers and traumas.
According to the study, the median cost for a child’s sepsis hospitalization overall is $26,592. This comes out to a median of $36,332 for children with chronic conditions and $10,963 for children without an existing chronic condition. Over the course of a year, total cost of newborn hospitalizations for sepsis was an estimated $1.96 billion compared with $5.4 billion among older infants and children. The average length of stay for sepsis patients is 31.5 days, which is nearly eight times longer than the average stay for other childhood conditions.
Read more:
- Cost of Pediatric Severe Sepsis Hospitalizations. JAMA Pediatrics. August 12 2019
- Sepsis Alliance: https://www.sepsis.org/news/treating-children-for-sepsis-costs-soaring/