Wipe out hospital infections
January 20, 2006
Long
Islanders, like most Americans, are paying with their pocketbooks and their
lives for poor hygiene in their hospitals. Infections that have been nearly
eradicated elsewhere are raging through hospitals. One out of every 20 patients
contracts an infection in the hospital. The danger is worsening because,
increasingly, these infections cannot be cured with commonly used antibiotics.
In 1974, only 2 percent of Staphylococcus aureus
infections were drug resistant. By 2003, that figure soared to above 57 percent
and is still rising.
Denmark, Holland, and Finland once faced similar soaring rates
and brought them down below 1 percent. How? Through rigorous enforcement of
hand-cleaning rules, meticulous cleaning of equipment and rooms in between
patient use, testing all incoming patients to identify those carrying dangerous
bacteria such as drug-resistant Staph, and taking
precautions to ensure these bacteria are not spread to other patients on
gloves, uniforms, stethoscopes, wheelchairs, and other equipment.
A few
hospitals in the U.S. are proving these precautions
work here too. Hospitals in Pittsburgh, at the University Virginia, and
in the Sioux area of Iowa have reduced infections by 85
percent or even 90 percent in pilot programs, using these same precautions.
Can
hospitals on Long
Island
afford to take these precautions? They can’t afford not to. Neither can the
employers, property taxpayers and insurers on Long Island. Patients who contract hospital
infections often have to spend weeks or months extra in the hospital and go
through repeated surgeries to cut out infected tissue. Infections are adding
$30 billion to the nation’s health tab in unnecessary hospital costs alone, and
about $2 billion of that is paid here in New York. The 5 percent of patients who
develop infections wipe about 60 percent of a hospital’s operating profits, on
average, research suggests.
Hospitals
on Long
Island
also need to respond to this crisis soon, because before long hospital
infection will become the next asbestos, that is, the basis for numerous
class-action lawsuits.
Improving
hospital hygiene saves lives. It will also help save hospitals from financial
failure, reduce needless health-care spending, and avert costly litigation.
It’s time for Long
Island
hospitals to take the lead in preventing hospital infections. Long Islanders
deserve no less.
Betsy McCaughey
Chairman, Committee
to Reduce
Infection Deaths
Former Lt. Governor
of New York State
www.hospitalinfection.org