Emergency department charges may be associated with mortality in patients with severe sepsis and septic shock: a cohort study

摘要

BackgroundSepsis severity of illness is challenging to measure using claims, which makes sepsis difficult to study using administrative data. We hypothesized that emergency department (ED) charges may be associated with hospital mortality, and could be a surrogate marker of severity of illness for research purposes. The objective of this study was to measure concordance between ED charges and mortality in admitted patients with severe sepsis or septic shock.