November 21st, 2006[Health新闻]Pennsylvania Publishes Infection Rates - USA Today
Pennsylvania Publishes Infection Rates
By Julie Appleby, USA TODAY
(Nov. 15) - Pennsylvania became the first state Tuesday to publicly report the number of patients who contracted an infection while in its 168 hospitals last year, a move that may boost efforts for public reporting of hospital quality data nationwide.
The state said more than 19,000 patients got an infection, driving up costs and the death rate among those who fell ill.
The Pennsylvania report covers 1.6 million hospital admissions and comes amid a growing effort by employers, insurers and governments to get hospitals to publicly release more data on quality.
Under the state’s law, hospitals must report infection rates for four broad types of infections: surgical site; urinary tract; pneumonia; and blood stream.
Proponents say Pennsylvania’s public reporting effort will spur hospitals to lower their infection rates and give consumers more information.
"It will stimulate hospitals to do the hard work of self-evaluation and improvement," says David Nash, chairman of the Department of Health Policy at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, who also heads a technical advisory group to the Pennsylvania state agency that issued the report.
Still, controversy dogs efforts to report infection rates on a national level, with debate about what should be reported and how. What is an infection? Should reporting be hospitalwide or just in selected areas, such as intensive care units?
"Those become political obstacles to doing any kind of reporting that has value to consumers," says Marc Volavka, executive director of the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, which collects infection data from hospitals.
Unlike some studies, the report looks at infections hospitalwide. It found, on average, 12.2 patients per 1,000 got an infection. On average, patients who got infected cost private insurers $59,915 for hospital care, compared with $8,311 for those who didn’t.
Quality experts expect the report will be used by hospitals to improve infection control efforts, which range from requiring consistent hand washing to taking special steps to prevent patients on ventilators from getting pneumonia.
"Hospital-acquired infections … are about processes of care that are flawed within hospitals," Volavka says.
While many states issue hospital "report cards," which track a variety of quality measures, none releases hospital-specific infection rates, says Lisa McGiffert, of Consumers Union, non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports, which has a campaign to get states to report hospital infection rates.
About 16 states have laws covering a variety of infection reporting requirements, but none has yet issued a comprehensive report.
"This is raising the bar for every other state," McGiffert says.
