Sepsis in the United States

Sepsis in the United States: Sepsis is a life-threatening emergency that happens when a body's response to an infection damages vital organs and, often, causes death. It is one of the most expensive conditions treated in hospitals in the United States.This visualization presents data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project on— A new interactive tool from AHRQ allows researchers, policymakers and others to explore trends in hospital care for sepsis, a life-threatening condition that is among the most expensive to treat in U.S. hospitals. Sepsis caseloads in inpatient settings at nonfederal acute care hospitals increased from 1.8 million in 2016 to 2.5 million in 2021, an increase of nearly 40 percent. AHRQ’s new resource, released during Patient Safety Awareness Week 2025 and based on AHRQ’s Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project data, allows for the analysis of sepsis-related data over time in two important areas: Morbidity and in-hospital mortality, including inpatient stays and emergency department utilization, readmissions, post-acute care transitions after hospitalization and in-hospital deaths. Outcomes of sepsis hospitalizations, including length of stay, average hospital cost and total hospital costs by patient characteristics. Additional data depicting state-specific utilization in sepsis hospital care will be added soon to the data visualization. Access this new data resource and other AHRQ data visualizations for information on diverse topics such as trends in ownership of healthcare practices, opioid hospitalizations and traumatic brain injuries.