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Study says poor hygiene leads to higher infection rate

Infection Control Monitor, December 1, 2006

Turning the spotlight on hospital-acquired infections, the American Journal of Medical Quality reported on three separate studies in a supplement to its December issue.

Two of those studies concluded that it's not how sick the patient is at the time of admission, but a hospital's procedures--such as handwashing and controlling traffic through the operating room--that determines the likelihood of developing an infection. A third study disputed the myth that hospitals make money when patients get these infections.

"Regrettably, many persons in healthcare think that hospital-acquired infections are expected outcomes from the care of seriously ill patients," the journal's editor David B. Nash, MD, MBA, FACP, chairman of the department of health policy at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, told U.S. Newswire. "[These studies] will do much to help explode the myth that infections occur and cannot be prevented."

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