Tennessee Medical Malpractice Law Blog

Do you want to know what hospital-acquired infections cost the good people of Pennsylvania per year? Go to this post at www.dayontorts.

The best way to reduce the cost of malpractice in our health care system is to reduce malpractice, i.e. to reduce preventable injury and death. Some states are trying to stop hospital acquired infections from causing injury and death, and a step in that worthy goal is to quantity the problem.

Pennsylvania is the first state that has required its hospitals to report comprehensive information about hoospital acquired infections. Look what it learned:

* 11,668 proven hospital acquired infections occurred
* resulting in 1,793 deaths
* and 205,000 extra hospital days
* at a cost of $2 billion in additional hospital charges
* 29 hospitals (less than 20 % of the total surveyed) which had a total of 25 percent of statewide admissions reported more than half (50.6 percent) of the 11,668 hospital-acquired infections.

But it may actually be worse than that. You see, there is a data problem. "One of PHC4's [the complier of the information] major interests is the discrepancy between the number of hospital-acquired infections reported by hospitals, 11,668, and the 115,631 infections billed to purchasers, private insurers and the Medicare and Medicaid programs. [A PCH4 leader] said while it is reasonable to assume that not all the infections were acquired in the hospital, these billed infections suggest the possibility of more hospital-acquired infections than those confirmed by hospitals and reported to PHC4." {Emphasis added.}

Read the complete article about the study here.

By the way, who gets paid for caring for patients who have hospital acquired infections?

Legislation is pending in Tennessee to require hospitals to report similar information. Hospitals spent millions of dollars advertising their services to potential patients. Shouldn't patients be able to find out the risk of getting sick in the hospital?

One more thing to think about. Assume PA hospitals have an average rate of hospital acquired infections - no better and no worse than the other hospitals of the Nation. Assume further that the hospitalization rate and length of stay is equal to that of the rest of the Nation.

PA has about 14 million people. Tennessee has about 5 million people. Under the above assumptions, about 600 Tennesseans die per year from hospital aquired infections. The cost to our health care system is $600,000,000. In the country, with almost 300,000,000 people, the death toll rises to 35,000 people. That is more people than the total population of Oak Ridge.

And then, there are the families left behind....