| U.S. Says Hospital Infections Cost Billions Updated 2:14 PM ET March 5, 2000-By Mike Cooper \ ATLANTA (Reuters) - Infections that patients catch while hospitalized for other health problems add almost $5 billion to the cost of U.S. health care every year, a federal health agency said Sunday. Dr. William Jarvis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offered the estimate at an international conference on health-care-associated infections sponsored by the CDC. "Our greatest concern is the illness and death that result from these infections. But the economic costs are also quite high," Jarvis said. "If you get an infection while you're in the hospital for an operation for heart disease, for example, your hospital stay may be extended by days, and sometimes weeks, before the infection is cured." Jarvis said an infection in the bloodstream may lengthen a hospital stay by up to three weeks and cost more than $50,000 to treat. He said hospitals can lose hundreds of thousands of dollars because insurance may not cover the costs of treating an infection acquired by a patient during treatment. About two million patients a year get an infection while being treated for another illness or injury and almost 88,000 die because of their infections, the CDC said. Jarvis said that 1.8 million of the infections occur in hospitals, almost 100,000 occur in long-term care centers and about 340,000 occur in home health care. Dr. Richard Wenzel, chairman of the department of internal medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, said bloodstream infections could account for as many as 105,500 deaths per year, which would make them the nation's fourth leading cause of death. The increasing number of patients receiving medical care in the home also poses a new challenge for infection control, said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the CDC's Hospital Infections Program. "We have to monitor the frequency of these events and learn how to prevent them," Gerberding said. More than 2,000 health experts are attending the Decennial International Conference on Nosocomial and Health-care-associated Infections. |
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