Pediatric sepsis hospitalizations cost about $7.3 billion in 2016, and the costs disproportionately affected children with complex chronic conditions, according to a study published Aug. 12 in JAMA Pediatrics.
Researchers studied pediatric hospitalizations for children ages 19 and younger in the 2016 Nationwide Readmissions Database, which includes all-payer hospitalization claims from 27 states. They identified severe sepsis cases among the hospitalizations and studied hospital costs by the number and type of complex chronic conditions and hospital mortality rates.
They found an estimated 72,288 pediatric sepsis hospitalizations cost $7.3 billion nationwide. The median cost per hospitalization was $26,592, which is 12 times the median cost of all-cause pediatric hospitalizations. Children with chronic conditions made up 77 percent of sepsis hospitalizations but 92.6 percent of costs, suggesting these children and their families are disproportionately impacted by sepsis hospitalization costs.
The study likely underestimates the total costs of pediatric sepsis hospitalizations, because it does not include post-hospitalization costs or lost work among caregivers, according to Erin Carlton, MD, the study's lead author.