Today's Washington Post reports:
"Each year, an estimated 1.7 million hospital patients develop infections, each of which adds thousands of dollars to the cost of treatment. And some patients pay the highest price: Hospital infections kill approximately 99,000 Americans a year.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the source of these estimates; actual numbers are unknown because hospitals in most states are not required to tally and report infections....
"Giving patients an appropriate antibiotic in the hour before surgery has been found to reduce infection risks, as has good hand-washing and other practices. Yet not all hospitals perform such preventive measures with consistency."
This is not a new issue. In 2002, a Chicago
Tribune article stated that 100,000 hospital-infection-related deaths occurred in the year 2000 and that 75,000 were preventable...
, having resulted from “unsanitary facilities, germ-laden instruments, unwashed hands and other lapses....”
Dr. Barry Farr, who was president of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, told the Tribune:
"‘The number of people needlessly killed by hospital infections is unbelievable, but the public doesn't know anything about it . . . . For years, we've just been quietly bundling the bodies of patients off to the morgue while infection rates get higher and higher.’"
That's why the Consumer's Union wants Congress to pass a bill requiring hospitals to publish information about their infection rates. I know, some people downright abhor the idea of government regulation.
But if you needed surgery, wouldn't you want to compare local hospitals and find out which had lower infection rates? All hospitals could voluntarily disclose their infection statistics to the public, but many don't. Who has the ability to force such disclosures? "Big Government" is your only hope.
Another issue: why would any hospital slack off on sanitation? It may have something to do with a trend among some hospital chains that involved maximizing profits by cutting staff. This certainly casts doubt on the "free market" notion that profit-motive promotes better service.
Loosely Related Posts:
* Contractor Fraud: Driving Up Healthcare Costs?
* Pharma-Paid Doctors Wrote Risky Scrips for Kids
* Insurance Companies Get Away with Over-billing Medicare
* Drug Companies Scammed Taxpayers, Cancer Patients, Others
* FDA's Latest Pharma-Friendly Sins
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