Hospitals, heal thyselves

One doesn't think of hospitals as places that cause illness, but hospital-acquired infections are one of the leading causes of patient deaths.

The state Legislature is right to demand hospitals begin reporting their infection rates, an effort intended to spur corrective measures. A bill passed by the state House and now in the Senate would require hospitals to start reporting to the state July 2008 the rates of bloodstream infections in patients on central lines. The state Department of Health would gradually include other infections, including ventilator-associated pneumonia and infected surgical incisions.

This is a plan worth placing on a fast track.

Nationwide, 2 million patients suffer needlessly after getting an infection in the hospital. The Centers for Disease Control estimates 90,000 of them die. Preventable deaths, of which hospital-acquired infections is a part, eat up $17 to $29 billion a year.

Hospitals have improved, placing plastic gloves and anti-bacterial wash at hand, but they have a long way to go toward cleaning up their act. The key to preventing hospital-acquired infections is basic cleanliness: hands washed between patients, sterile equipment, clean rooms.

Hospitals must do a better job of monitoring invasive lines that go into patients, such as catheters, intravenous tubes and central lines. These are entry points for deadly bacteria.

A way to compel hospitals is through public reporting. Consumers have a right to know which hospitals are improving their infection rates and which aren't.

Regular reporting encourages a thoughtful surveillance missing from hospital's current practice of self-monitoring. Knowing the public is watching is likely to stimulate more effort to control and prevent hospital-acquired infections.

Data submitted by hospitals would help national efforts as well. Infection rates from the CDC and other agencies are out of date, caused in large part by the fact that only 14 states require hospitals to report infections.

This isn't a complex problem in search of high-tech or expensive solutions. This is Hygiene 101.