Hospital infections cost U.S. $10 billion a year

By Anne Harding | Reuters – Thu, Sep 12, 2013  NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Infections acquired in the hospital cost the U.S. health care system $10 billion a year, new findings show.  Past studies have pegged the annual cost of treating those infections at $20 billion to $40 billion, so the new numbers show progress is being made, Dr. Eyal Zimlichman of The Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, one of the new study’s authors, told Reuters Health.  Nevertheless, he said, much more can be done.  According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about one in every 20 hospitalized patients contracts a hospital-acquired infection.  Read more