Sepsis = Profits?
One of the complications patients dread most when they're in a hospital's ICU is preventable blood infections , or sepsis, which every year kills almost 30,000 in the U.S. alone. According to a recent Johns Hopkins study, however, hospitals make three times as much money off patients who develop blood infections than they do off plain old infections. That's because insurers pay more for these kinds of complications. The study points out that hospitals may have no incentive to try to cut back on these bloodstream infections because they're very profitable. It may sound hard to believe, but a story at newswise.com reports that researchers "found that an ICU patient who develops an avoidable central line-associated bloodstream infection costs nearly three times more to care for than a similar infection-free patient." Even more relevant for profit-driven hospitals (aren't they all?): hospitals earn nearly nine times more, from insurers, for trea...