By Candy Lashkari
Despite being reported over a decade ago, little has been done in America to reduce hospital born infections as per a Health and Human Services department quality report for 2009 to Congress. Hospital acquired infections seem to be on the increase according to the report when compared with statistics available for 2007. The situation is being seen as critical by many health care experts.
Nancy Foster, vice president for quality and safety at the American Hospital Association said, “We're doing that which we know how to do, and it's not having the intended effect. We need to identify other things we can do to drive down that rate of infections."
Blood stream infections after surgery have increased by 8 % , while urinary tract infections following use of a catheter after surgery have increased by 3.6%. For common infections caused due to medical care, the statistics have increased by 1.6%. Number of blood stream infections caused by central venous catheters, placed in the neck, chest or groin to administer medication, drain fluids or collect blood samples have stayed the same. While the only bright spot in the report was the drop in 12% of rates of pneumonia after surgery.
“We know that focused attention to eliminating health care acquired infections can reduce them dramatically," said Dr. Carolyn Clancy, head of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which conducted the studies.
About 100 hospital emergency rooms in Michigan have shown that it is possible to bring down the rate of infections drastically. By paying great attention to procedure they have managed to reduce the rate of central catheter infections to nearly zero. The hospital industry feels that more recent efforts implemented to reduce hospital infections may not be reflected in the data and hope that the next study will show improvement.