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Essential Facts
You Need to Know About Hospital Infections
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| Note: For additional information and footnotes, please see the 2nd edition of RID's popular publication,
Unnecessary Deaths: The Human and Financial Costs of Hospital Infections
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Keep in mind:
·We have the knowledge to prevent hospital infection deaths.
·We don't have to wait for a scientific breakthrough.
·Yet most hospitals have failed to act.
·The situation is growing more dangerous because, increasingly, hospital infections cannot be cured with commonly-used antibiotics.
Essential facts:
1. Infections contracted in hospitals are the fourth largest killer in America. Every year in this country, two million patients' contract infections in hospitals, and an estimated 103,000 die as a result, as many deaths as from AIDS, breast cancer, and auto accidents combined.
2. A few hospitals in the U.S.—too few—are proving that infections are almost entirely preventable. How are they doing it? Through rigorous hand hygiene, meticulous cleaning of equipment and rooms in between patient use, testing incoming patients to identify those carrying dangerous bacteria, and taking precautions to prevent these bacteria from spreading to other patients.
3. In 2003, the Society for Healthcare Epidemiologists of America (SHEA) announced the precautions that research proves can eradicate most hospital infections. Yet only a few hospitals have taken these precautions, and the CDC still has not called on all hospitals to implement them.
4. Hospital infections add an estimated $30.5 billion to the nation's hospital costs each year. Patients, insurers and taxpayers pay part of that cost, but hospitals have to absorb much of the cost. As a result, infections erode hospital profits. Preventing infections can turn a financially failing hospital profitable.
5. Better infection prevention in hospitals is essential to prepare the nation for avian flu or bioterrorism. If avian flu were to wing its way to the U.S., the death toll would depend largely on what American hospitals did when the first avian flu patients were admitted. If hospitals have effective infection controls in place, they can prevent bird flu from infecting other patients who did not come in with it. If not, bird flu could sweep through hospitals. Right now, most hospitals are woefully under prepared. Hospitals have failed to stop the spread of ordinary infections spread by touch and would not be able to contain flu viruses, which are communicated by droplets from coughing and sneezing as well as touch. Even more challenging would be small pox, plague, and other bioterrorism weapons that can travel through the air. Shoddy infection control is poor preparation for a flu epidemic and poor homeland security as well.
6. Hospital infection is a far deadlier problem than the number of uninsured. The Institute of Medicine estimates that as many as 18,000 people a year die prematurely because they don't have health insurance. That's tragic. But five times as many people die each year from hospital infections, and most of them are insured.
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