Source: AJC Atlanta Journal Constitution, June, 20 2011
»As a recent series in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution highlights, the risks of infection during a hospital stay can be deadly. Hospital-acquired infections are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States and cost hospitals more than $7 billion last year. Unless hospitals take aggressive action to prevent and protect, the problem will continue, and thousands more patients will die, many of them needlessly.
It’s doesn’t have to be that way.
The battle against hospital-acquired infections has to be waged within the hospital itself. A powerful weapon is hand hygiene, but clean hands are not the only remedy. Hospitals must focus on what they can do that is not dependent on who — and what — walks into the hospital.
When every employee and every visitor is conscious of cleanliness, infections rates drop. But is that feasible?
Facilities need to adopt better tools to monitor and report infections. Epidemiologists often say, “You can’t prevent what you can’t measure.” When it comes to health care-associated infections, we know this holds true. When hospitals measure infections and act on that information, they can make dramatic progress in preventing infections. As the recent reporting in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution pointed out, the progress that can be made has surprised nearly everyone.
Industry needs to create cultures that fight contamination.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has devoted considerable effort to developing a national infrastructure to support accurate measurement of health care-associated infections.
This network is the gold standard for monitoring health care-associated infections.»
To read the article clic on AJC
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