Hospital readmissions for sepsis are highly common, extremely costly.

Hospital readmissions for sepsis are highly common, extremely costly. The Affordable Care Act created several national initiatives aimed at reducing hospital readmission rates for heart attacks, congestive heart failure, and other common high-risk conditions. But there is still no national program intended to address sepsis. Now, a new UCLA study has found that sepsis accounts for roughly the same percentage of hospital readmissions in California as heart attacks and congestive heart failure--and that it costs the healthcare system more than both of them combined.

The research, conducted by the UCLA Clinical and Translational Science Institute, is published online in the journal Critical Care Medicine.

"Our study shows how common sepsis readmissions are and some of the factors that are associated with higher risk of readmission after these severe infections," said Dong Chang, MD, assistant professor of medicine at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and the study's lead author. "In addition, we show that sepsis readmissions have a significant impact on healthcare expenditures relative to other high-risk conditions that are receiving active attention and interventions.

"Based on these results, we believe that sepsis readmissions are under-recognized and should be among the conditions that are targeted for intervention by policymakers."

The researchers analyzed admissions for adults 18 and older for sepsis at all California hospitals from 2009 through 2011, and during the same period for congestive heart failure and heart attacks. There were a total of 240,198 admissions for sepsis, 193,153 for congestive heart failure, and 105,684 for heart attacks.

They found that the all-cause 30-day readmission rate for sepsis was 20.4 percent. The rates for congestive heart failure and heart attacks were 23.6 percent and 17.7 percent, respectively. The study found that people with sepsis were readmitted because of respiratory failure; pneumonia; complications with devices, implants or grafts; urinary tract infections; renal infections; renal failure; and intestinal infections; among other causes.