The CDC wants your hospital to come clean on infections
Feb 4, 2010 11:17 AM
Unfortunately, patients acquire about 1.7 million infections every year in U.S. hospitals, most of them preventable. The latest issue of Consumer Reports investigates a serious and common problem that is responsible for at least 30 percent of the nation’s 99,000 deaths from hospital-acquired infections.
The problem is bloodstream infections introduced through central lines. A central line is a long flexible catheter threaded through a vein leading to a blood vessel near the heart and used to deliver medications, fluids and nutrition to critically ill patients. Studies have shown the risk of these serious, sometimes deadly infections can be nearly eliminated when hospital staffs follow a simple prevention checklist.
Our non-profit publisher, Consumers Union, has long supported public reporting of hospital-acquired infections so patients can know whether their hospital makes safety a priority. Moreover, research shows that when hospitals are aware of their infection rates, they can implement prevention strategies to reduce infections. That’s why we’ve just added infection information to our hospital Ratings.
Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took the unusual step of publicly supporting CU’s efforts. “The tracking and reporting of healthcare-associated infections is an important step toward healthcare transparency. Infection data can give healthcare facilities, patients and public health agencies the knowledge needed to design and implement prevention strategies that protect patients and save lives,” said Denise Cardo, M.D., the director of CDC’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, in a statement.
“It’s a significant change for the CDC to come out so strongly in favor of public reporting of hospital acquired infections,” says Lisa McGiffert, manager of Consumers Union’s Safe Patient Project. “They have acknowledged public reporting in the past, and have issued guidance for hospitals, but they’ve never signaled such strong support for this as an important prevention measure.”
This is a welcome development for hospital patients everywhere. And there is potentially more to spur public reporting on the way. The health-care reform proposals currently stalled in Congress would both call for greater public reporting of hospital infections.
—Kevin McCarthy, associate editor
For more, check out the Safe Patient Project blog.
“It’s a significant change for the CDC to come out so strongly in favor of public reporting of hospital acquired infections,” says Lisa McGiffert, manager of Consumers Union’s Safe Patient Project. “They have acknowledged public reporting in the past, and have issued guidance for hospitals, but they’ve never signaled such strong support for this as an important prevention measure.”
This is a welcome development for hospital patients everywhere. And there is potentially more to spur public reporting on the way. The health-care reform proposals currently stalled in Congress would both call for greater public reporting of hospital infections.
—Kevin McCarthy, associate editor
For more, check out the Safe Patient Project blog.
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