A recent publication examines differences across rural and urban hospitals in the rates of sepsis cases as well as attributes such as length of stay, cost of care, and death rates. The report, from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), looked at the over 2 million admissions each year with sepsis as a primary diagnosis and found distinctions between rural and urban facilities in the proportion of admissions for this reason as well as additional differences based on facility ownership status. Of note, rural hospitals admitted proportionately fewer sepsis cases, had lower costs and length of stay, and experienced a rise in death rates, from 7.5 to 10.3 percent, over the three years studied.
