Feds Hope to Cut Sepsis Deaths by Hitching Medicare Payments to Treatment Stats

(By Julie Appleby for KFF Health News)

Don Smith remembers the moment he awoke in an intensive care unit after 13 days in a medically induced coma. His wife and daughter were at his bedside, and he thought it had been only a day since he arrived at the emergency room with foot pain.

Smith said his wife “slowly started filling me in” on the surgery, the coma, the ventilator. The throbbing in his foot had been a signal of a raging problem.

“When you hear someone say a person died of infection, that’s sepsis,” said Smith, 66, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, who went to the ER shortly before Christmas 2017. Ultimately, he spent almost two months in the hospital and a rehab center following multiple surgeries to clear the infected tissue and, later, to remove seven toes. Continue reading here…

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation.

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