Warning: Hospitals may be hazardous to your health

How hazardous?

A study published in Monday’s edition of Archives of Internal Medicine estimates that 48,000 people died in 2006 after developing sepsis or pneumonia during their hospital stays. Altogether, such infections forced patients to spend an extra 2.3 million days in the hospital and cost $8.1 billion to treat, the study found.

The true toll may be even higher, according to the study:

“These figures are likely to be underestimates because they focus on infections that were acquired and diagnosed during the same hospitalization, although many [hospital acquired infections], including most surgical site infections, are not diagnosed until after hospital discharge.”

If that’s not scary enough, study co-author Anup Malani from the University of Chicago Law School had this to say in a news release: “In some cases, relatively healthy people check into the hospital for routine surgery. They develop sepsis because of a lapse in infection control – and they can die.”

He added that the nation’s hospitals need to find a better way to reduce the risk of infections. Let’s hope the nation’s hospitals are listening.

-- Karen Kaplan

Comments

[David Franklin]

This has been a well known and recognized problem within health care for many years. A few years ago the Medicare program even stopped paying hospitals for the treatment of infections that were acquired during an inpatient admission. One of the most effective and underutilized countermeasures for limiting hospital acquired infections is to limit unnecessary contact with hospitals. There are many procedures that can be performed outside of the hospital environment that are far less expensive and that offer superior clinical outcomes. Home infusion is a great example of this opportunity; however, to this day Medicare does not recognize or reimburse this safe and effective alternative to hospital-based care. Let’s hope that during this time of increased focus on health care reform our elected officials see the wisdom of decreased costs and clinically superior results that accompany home infusion therapies, and act accordingly.

[Stem cell hospitals]

Great point! I remember thinking since when does a doctor who does patient care also do surgery? My experience has been they are two different people.