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Published on: 10/18/2007
Last Visited: 11/29/2007
But Michael Bennett, president of the lobbying group Coalition for Patients' Rights (CPR), says that "hospitals have a huge disincentive to accurately report their infections," and "there are countless ways that a reporting system can be gamed."Reporting laws are good, Bennett says, but "there is no data that I'm aware of that suggests reporting has lowered infection rates or the numbers of infections."
RID's McCaughey says that hospitals need to take the problems seriously and not skimp when it comes to forking out funds to do the job properly.In addition to saving lives, she notes that "We can show hospitals that they can be more profitable by preventing infections."She estimates that hospital infections add at least $30.5 billion a year to the nation's health care tab in hospital costs alone-enough to pay for the entire Medicare (Part D) prescription drug program.According to a recent article in The Lancet, "virtually all published analyses that have compared the cost of screening of patients on admission and using contact precautions with colonized patients" show that "the costs of caring for patients who become infected with MRSA are much greater than the costs of screening programs
What this country needs is federal infection-control legislation derived from evidence-based best practices, Bennett says.He co-founded CPR three years ago after his father died at age 88 from a deadly infection contracted at Northwest Hospital Center and Sinai Hospital, both in the Baltimore area, while being treated for a non,life threatening respiratory infection.Bennett is putting together a task force of scientists to draft new legislation or add teeth to existing measures that would mandate infection-control guidelines.That language would surely include active detection and isolation for the most egregiously out-of-control superbugs like MRSA.Hospitals need to "screen high-risk admissions and treat them proactively," Bennett says.
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