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Recent studies of claims data suggest that the incidence of sepsis in hospitals is increasing and sepsis-related mortality is declining. However, such data might be affected by incentivized coding practices — a “sepsis” diagnosis code might raise a hospital's reimbursement amount — which would overestimate the incidence of sepsis in hospitals. Study authors used electronic health records and administrative data (on >7 million hospitalized adults in >400 U.S. hospitals from 2009 to 2014) from a diverse group of healthcare systems to determine annual sepsis incidence and mortality burden (based on Sepsis-3 definitions; NEJM JW Gen Med Mar 15 2016 and JAMA 2016; 315:775).
Findings were as follows:
6% of hospitalized patients had sepsis; approxim…