Hospital Borne Infections in the News

Germ facts may go public                    

By Luis Fabregas
TRIBUNE-REVIEW

A group representing Pennsylvania hospitals is considering a plan that would tell the public how many patients pick up infections at specific hospitals, the group's top executive said Tuesday.

The disclosure of the plan by the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania followed the group's scathing assessment of a new state report that said the problem of deadly germs is larger and costlier than originally estimated.

The report from the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council said hospitals reported 13,711 infections during the first nine months of 2005, compared to 11,688 for all of 2004.

The council said those infections were associated with an additional 1,456 deaths, 227,000 extra hospital days and an added $52,600 in costs for treatment of every patient with an infection.

The hospital association, which has criticized the council's earlier reports, called the numbers exaggerated and scientifically flawed.

Carolyn Scanlan, president and chief executive officer of the association, said numbers in the new report appear larger because hospitals in July began reporting seven additional categories of infections.

And she said the numbers don't show if a patient's extra hospital days were completely due to an infection, or the disease that brought them to the hospital in the first place.

"We shouldn't be collecting data for the sake of collecting data," said Scanlan, whose association represents more than 100 hospitals. "We should be collecting data to turn into information that we can use to correct problems."

Council officials attributed the jump in infections to better reporting from hospitals as well as the increased requirements.

Council president Marc Volavka said insurance payments to cover hospitalizations for hospital-acquired infections are mammoth.

"Third-party insurers, their purchaser clients and public-sector programs must be scratching their heads about what they are paying for," Volavka said.

Scanlan said the association has talked with officials with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about a plan for hospitals to release infection data on their own. She said hospitals could make infection data available on their Web sites.

"Hospitals aren't trying to hide anything," she said. "Hospitals are interested in releasing what they consider valid and accurate data."

There is no time frame for the plan, she said.

Council officials said they could not comment about the plan because they had not heard about it.

Neither had Dr. Rick Shannon, chair of medicine at Allegheny General Hospital on the North Side.

"I'm not sure how it would work," said Shannon, who has led efforts to cut some types of infections at the hospital. "It seems to be duplicative."

     
Shannon said infections such as ventilator-associated pneumonias at Allegheny General have doubled the cost of caring for patients.

"No one gets better because of an infection," Shannon said. "While I wouldn't say people die directly as a result of the infection, no one got better as a result of one."

Luis Fabregas can be reached at lfabregas@tribweb.com

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