Some 14,000 Americans die every year from a bacterial infection known as Clostridium difficile, or C. diff. for short, and another 300,000 are hospitalized, according to a report released today from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And unlike other hospital-acquired infections, those numbers are going up instead of down—largely due to the rise of antibiotic-resistant strains of the bacteria.

Hospital employees report only 14 percent of medical errors and usually don’t change their practices to prevent future mistakes, according to a new study from the Office of the Inspector General and the Department of Health and Human Services. And while proposed new DHHS rules would encourage more reporting, they still don’t require that the information be made public.

Hospitals got better at preventing four common and deadly hospital-acquired infections last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And our updated hospital Ratings show similar results. But there’s still plenty of room for improvement, and a need for broader access to data, say our hospital-infection experts.

The country’s leading hospital accreditation board recently released a list of 405 hospitals that it says scrupulously follow guidelines for treating heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, children’s asthma, and surgical care. The list, our experts say, is a step in the right direction in terms of making hospitals accountable. But it also has some shortcomings that highlight the problems consumers face when trying to get information about hospital performance.

One of the most important things to know about a hospital is how many of its patients develop infections. But hospitals often don’t release that data. To help motivate them, we put together a list of teaching hospitals that haven't made their information on infections easily accessible to the public.

The Boston vs. New York rivalry isn’t just the Red Sox vs. the Yankees. It’s which city, each known for its prestigious hospitals, has better medical care. Well, when it comes to preventing hospital-acquired infections at least, Boston wins, according to our updated hospital Ratings.

Today the federal government, with much fanfare, unveiled a new plan to make health care safer that could save 60,000 lives and as much as $35 billion over the next three years. One important issue conspicuously missing from the rollout: any mention of letting patients know how things are going.

When Southwest Airlines recently learned that some of its planes had small cracks that could lead to gaping holes in mid-flight, it grounded the planes and ordered an independent safety review. Not perfect, maybe, but at least fast and transparent. In fact, over the past few decades the airline industry has developed a pretty good reputation for safety. I wish the same could be said for our hospitals.

A simple cleaning protocol can sharply curtail the spread of deadly antibiotic-resistant infections in the hospital, according to a study out this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Our updated analysis of hospital-acquired infections suggest that while things might not have improved much from a year ago, the trends are at least heading in the right direction. And a report released today by the Centers for Disease...

A program that includes a simple 5-step safety checklist for preventing bloodstream infections caused by large central-line catheters in hospital intensive-care units in Michigan appears to reduce patient deaths by 10 percent, according to a report published online this...

Getting a checkup isn't high on most people's lists of enjoyable activities. But imagine how much less pleasant it would be if you arrived at your appointment to find a medical gown that didn't fit you, a scale that...

Two studies out recently suggest that one infection is on the rise in hospitalized children, and several are increasing among patients who have to wait in the hospital for elective surgery. Gastrointestinal infections in hospitalized childrenResearchers who examined nearly...

Two separate research teams—one using a simple 5-step check list and the other sophisticated DNA tests (in mice)—reported progress this week against deadly bloodstream infections caused by large intravenous catheters used in hospital intensive care units. The checklist, developed...

Each month, one in seven Medicare patients whoare hospitalized suffer at least one “adverse event”. Despite a decade of media and public attention, medical errors in hospitals—including those that lead to serious harm and even death—continue an alarming rate,...