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U.S. hospitals charged $873 billion in 2005

October 25, 2017

The 2005 bill, which is adjusted for inflation, represents the total amount charged for 39 million hospital stays.

The average yearly rate of increase over the last several years in the national hospital bill was 4.5 percent. At this rate, researchers estimate that the annual national hospital bill may reach $1 trillion by 2008.

The AHRQ report also found that:

Medicare paid the bulk of the national hospital bill ($411 billion), followed by private insurance ($272 billion) and Medicaid ($124 billion). Uninsured hospital stays accounted for $38 billion in charges. The remaining $28 billion was for other insurers, including Workers' Compensation, TRICARE, Title V, and other government programs. One fifth of the national hospital bill was for treatment of just five conditions - coronary artery disease ($46 billion), pregnancy and childbirth ($44 billion), newborn infant care ($35 billion), heart attack ($32 billion), and congestive heart failure ($30 billion).

For 10 conditions, the growth was greater than the average of all hospital stays:

Sepsis 189 percent Chest pain 181 percent Respiratory failure 171 percent Back pain 170 percent Osteoarthritis 165 percent Irregular heart beat 131 percent Procedure complications 120 percent Congestive heart failure 117 percent Medical device complications 113 percent Diabetes 97 percent

This AHRQ News and Numbers is based on data in The National Hospital Bill: Growth Trends and 2005 Update on the Most Expensive Conditions by Payer. The report uses statistics from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample, a database of hospital inpatient stays that is nationally representative of inpatient stays in all short-term, non-Federal hospitals. The data are drawn from hospitals that comprise 90 percent of all discharges in the United States and include all patients, regardless of insurance type, as well as the uninsured.

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Study authors suggest that the association of ITPKC with Kawasaki disease may have immediate clinical implications. Up to 20% of children who have KD are resistant to the standard treatment with intravenous immunoglobulin. This therapy is more likely to fail in individuals with the ITPKC risk variant. If these individuals could be identified with a genetic test, they could be offered alternative, more intensive therapies.

Further studies will identify additional sites of genetic variation and may capture enough of the genetic influence that a diagnostic test can be devised to identify children at increased risk. These children with KD would be candidates for more aggressive therapy.

???A significant number of KD patients suffer irreversible coronary artery damage, which can lead to heart attack, heart failure, or require transplant,??? noted Burns. ???Our goal at RCHSD is to create a genetic test for KD patients that will indicate whether the patient is at increased risk. If that's the case, we can use additional treatments and potentially reduce future complications.???

In addition, the finding may have implications for understanding the genetic thermostat that regulates the intensity of a person's immune response to inflammation. Investigators are now looking at what impact this genetic variation might have on initiating other inflammatory conditions, such as atherosclerosis and myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle often caused by a viral infection.

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