Group Wants Hospitals to Report Infections

ATLANTA — A consumer group has been pushing for hospitals to report rates of patients infected during their hospital stays, although medical officials have been reluctant to do so out of concerns over cost and whether publicly releasing the data will fix the problem.

The Consumers Union, which publishes the popular magazine Consumer Reports, wants states to require hospitals to make public data on patients infected at hospitals. That’s because each year there are 2 million healthcare-related infections – including 90,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"It is a problem," said Lisa McGiffert, senior policy analyst for the group. "It affects the lives of 5 percent to 10 percent of hospital patients, who sometimes suffer debilitating long-term health consequences. We do want to give the system a little bit of a shove to take action."

The consumer push for better health information has already prompted four states – Florida, Illinois, Missouri and Pennsylvania – to require hospitals to make public such data.

Yet each of the states have fledgling reporting systems, as there is no industry standard. And existing Web sites that offer hospital information to consumers often have limited data, are difficult for consumers to use, or do not provide data on specific hospitals, McGiffert said.

Later this month, the federal health agency is expected to release recommendations on the best ways states can work with hospitals to make infection data public. A draft of the agency’s plan was expected to be released Tuesday at the meeting of The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology in Atlanta.

The CDC became involved after many state officials sought the Atlanta-based agency’s guidance on how best to report hospital infection rates.

"You want to have data … so consumers can make decisions but also health care providers can use for improvement," said Dr. Denise Cardo, director of the CDC’s division of healthcare quality promotion.

The CDC recommends that states make the most of local infection control experts and the vast array of knowledge the federal agency has built against infections in the last 30 years. In addition, states are urged to use existing public health data collection methods and to make sure any data collected is useful to the public and to health officials.

But hospitals and the CDC say there’s not enough evidence that releasing infection rates to the public actually helps hospitals reduce the problem. Hospital officials say that collecting and analyzing the data would be another huge task on top of other responsibilities – including saving people’s lives – amid budget limitations.

"We are very interested in sharing our data with the public to make them safe and to provide a higher quality of care," said Nancy Foster of the American Hospital Association. "But how do you do that credibly? We don’t need another set of data graveyards."

The hospital infection rates would have to be validated, which is neither easy to do nor cheap, Foster said. In addition, focus groups have had trouble understanding the information, she said.

But McGiffert says the infections cost hospitals about $5 billion dollars a year, so it makes sense for hospitals to do everything possible to reduce the rates – including making the problem known to the public.

"If they can reduce infections by half, they can save hospitals a lot of money," she said.

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On the Net:

CDC info: http://www.cdc.gov  

Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology: http://www.apic.org  

American Hospital Association: http://www.aha.org  

Consumers Union: http://www.consumersunion.org