• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

PA hospital infections cost more than $1 billion

Quality Improvement Monitor, November 17, 2005

Medicare and Medicaid in 2004 paid Pennsylvania hospitals more than $1 billion to cover treatments for hospital-acquired infections, according to the November 17 Philadelphia Inquirer.

Medicare paid $1 billion to cover 7,870 patients who required treatments for infections acquired at the hospital, and Medicaid paid $371.6 million for 1,028 patients, according to the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, an independent state agency.

Commercial insurers were billed $603.8 million to cover infection treatments during the same time period, the Inquirer reported.

Pennsylvania requires hospitals to report infections acquired during hospital care. Hospital-acquired infections were associated with 1,793 deaths and an extra 205,000 days spent in the hospital, the newspaper said.

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive