Posted on 05/13/2007 8:29:41 PM PDT by Calpernia
TRENTON, N.J. -- Eleven times last year a dangerous infection broke out in a New Jersey hospital, and while the state health department's policy is to release to the public the names of pathogens and the counties where outbreak happened, it doesn't release the names of the hospitals, according to a published report.
New Jersey is behind more than a dozen other states _ including neighboring New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, that have required hospitals to make infection rates public. That's in response to alarm over infections, especially those resistant to antibiotics.
Hospital infections kill more than 100,000 Americans each year and add $7 billion to the nation's health care costs.
Consumer groups are demanding more transparency.
"Secrecy has allowed this problem to fester for far too long. You can call your local health department and get more information on a restaurant," Betsy McCaughey, a former New York lieutenant governor and now chairwoman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, told The Star-Ledger of Newark.
"There was a presumption that these (infections) were an inevitable risk of surgery and hospitalization,'' she said. "But there's compelling evidence now that nearly all are preventable.''
Much of the data New Jersey collects is not made public. However, a state system does rate hospitals based on lab reports of organisms resistant to antibiotics, but uses facility codes to hide the names in documents made public.
The system is also backlogged. The most recent report from 2003 uses data that was compiled in 2001.
Eddy Bresnitz, the state's epidemiologist, said staffing limitations have created the backlog.
Efforts by hospitals can reduce infection rates greatly. About three years ago, 18 of New Jersey's 80 acute-care created an infection control program through an effort organized by the New Jersey Hospital Association.
The hospitals said they cut ventilator-related pneumonia by more than half over two years, and central blood line infections by an even greater percentage.
TRENTON, N.J. — Eleven times last year a dangerous infection broke out in a New Jersey hospital, and while the state health department’s policy is to release to the public the names of pathogens and the counties where outbreak happened, it doesn’t release the names of the hospitals, according to a published report.<<<<
I think that going to a hospital, is more dangerous than staying home............
I’ve never gotten an infection in a NJ hospital - but last year I had a nurse put a needle through an IV port - without disinfecting the port first.
Don’t get me started on the practise of having two new bleeding mothers share a bath. No wonder they want to give babies a hepatis shot.
Mrs VS
bump
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