NUMBERING IN-HOSPITAL INFECTIONS
A CDC report has Medicare and hospitals taking action to help you and your loved one
BY:ERIC FEIL
The end result of a hospital visit should ideally be health and recovery. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that one in every 22 patients—roughly 1.7 million cases a year—may acquire an infection while hospitalized. In 99,000 of those 1.7 million cases, such hospital-contracted infections could be responsible for the patients' deaths.
"We touch a lot of things," says Lawrence Brandt, MD, chief of gastroenterology at Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, NY, "and don't consciously think about the effect of touching things and what we carry around." Studies confirm that germs can thrive at hospitals and that doctors' neckties, white coats, stethoscopes, pens and computer keyboards are all potential breeding grounds.
What can you do to reduce a patient's risk of picking up a dangerous infection? The CDC recommends you ask for details about the hospital's screening and isolation procedures. Curtis Allen, a CDC spokesperson, also recommends "frequent hand-washing—scrub with warm, soapy water for about 15 seconds"—and keeping surfaces like phones and tray tables clean with a disinfectant spray or wipe.
In an effort to reduce hospital-acquired infections, Medicare has sent health facilities a message: If you cause it, we don't pay for it. And since October 2007, Medicare's rules indicate that it will no longer pay if any of the following occurs after the patient is admitted to the hospital:
Catheter-associated urinary tract and vascular infections
Pressure ulcers
Objects left during surgery
Air embolism
Blood incompatibility
Mediastinitis
Injury due to falls
Will concern over the bottom line help provide top-grade healthcare? Time will tell.