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Patient safety advocates push for disclosure of hospital-acquired infections

Patient Safety Monitor Alert, February 24, 2005

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Patient safety advocates are demanding that the public be informed which hospitals have infection problems, according to a Des Moines Register article. Federal researchers estimate that two million U.S. patients pick up hospital acquired infections each year and nearly 90,000 die as a result.

Iowa legislators are also proposing House and Senate bills to require hospitals to publicly post their infection rates.

"People are getting infections that they shouldn't be getting and we want to stop it," said Lisa McGiffert, who is leading the effort nationally for Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports.

"Hospitals will always say, 'You can't get rid of all the infections,'" she said. "And I would say, 'You're focusing on the wrong thing. What you should be focusing on is all the infections that you can get rid of.'"

However, some in the medical field are skeptical of the effort. Reporting hospitalwide infection numbers would be meaningless, said Daniel Gervich, MD, who oversees infection control efforts at Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines.

Instead, posting the numbers would punish hospitals that carefully track infections because they are more likely to identify problems, he said. Such a practice could also denigrate hospitals that care for large numbers of poor people, who tend to have more ailments that make them susceptible to infections.

To read the complete Des Moines Register article, click here.

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