Hospital Complications Cost
$9 Billion, 30,000 Deaths

Medical complications cost U.S. patients extra days in the hospital, add billions of dollars to their medical bills and are blamed for more than 30,000 deaths each year, researchers said.

Patient infections and the reopening of wounds are the costliest complications both in terms of the risk of death and money, according to the study by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and Johns Hopkins University.

Based on 7.5 million hospital stays at 984 U.S. hospitals in 2000, the study projected U.S. patients accumulated an extra 2.4 million days in hospitals and $9.3 billion in excess charges from medical complications.

Some 32,000 deaths were attributable to such complications, it said.

That compared with a 1999 Institute of Medicine study that said medical errors caused between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths annually -- a finding that raised the alarm on often preventable mistakes in medical care.

Some of the complications were unavoidable, but "our results clearly show that medical injuries in hospitals pose a significant threat to patients and incur substantial costs to society," study author Chunliu Zhan of the Agency for Health Research wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

For example, the study found post-operative infections known as sepsis extended hospital stays by 11 days on average and added $58,000 in costs. A reopened wound cost 9.4 extra days and $40,000 in extra charges.

Reference Source 89

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