Hospital-acquired infections cost the nation's inpatient providers $9.8 billion a year, according to new research published in JAMA Internal Medicine. Nearly 34 percent of the costs are associated with surgical site infections. Ventilator-associated pneumonia accounts for 31.6 percent of the costs. The study relied on the National Healthcare Safety Network database and more than three decades of published medical literature. "Healthcare-associated infections account for a large proportion of the harms caused by healthcare and are associated with high costs," the authors wrote. >> Read the full article from FierceHealthcare