Funny thing, they'll still spend tons fighting our second amendment rights intead of buying some extra Lysol. There ya go, spend the money and hire people who need jobs and have them wipe down everyting at the hospitals with Lysol. But let me place my Lysol stock trade first....lol...

Thanks God this is not the third world.

We really need some tort reform so that hospitals can continue to ignore precautions to reduce these infections, which are a real boost for business if not for those pesky lawsuits.

I wonder what is the stats on patient non-compliance? Patients ignoring doctor's advice and not taking medication as ordered for infection. Then they have to get re-admitted for relapse on their infection. I bet its alot higher. It seems that everyone likes to place blame on everyone except the patient itself. Sounds familiar with people incurring too much debt too.

Here we go........more scare tactics from our government. Isn't it amazing that this hits the press now when our esteemed leader wants health care reform. And they were referring to 2006..........four years ago. Hello!!! Are we being manipulated or what?

Tort reform is not the answer to health care, that should be dealt with in another separate forum, bringing it up with health care is, only A way to stop the whole process, and slow it down to make it fail; we have just seen the beginning of whats to come , with millions of people not covered, it could break out over night and be out of control all it takes is a decease, to go undetected, and untreated, to start a world wide pandemic, of death and disaster, it has happened in the past and could happen again, the sooner they fix this problem the safer we will all be no matter who is right or wrong!!!

After reading some of these posts I can only conclude our biggest healthcare concern should be for a condition that has become a pandemic and there is no pill for it. I speak of cranial-rectal fusion and most of you posters are afflicted.

The answer is clear: Either ban hospitals or charge those who go to hospitals more for their healthcare. Why should I, someone who never goes to the hospital, have to pay the same rate as somebody else who does?

warning; sick/ infectious people can be dangerous to your health..common sense; stay away, stand back from sick people..as far as a hospitable goes, in my opinion; all it is a , sick/ death hotel/ motel and a expensive one at that......

You're putting a bunch of sick, immune-compromised people in one big building and expecting them not to infect each other? It's not going to happen! Hospitals are a cesspool of disease, by definition. Obviously hospitals need to take every precaution to keep people well, but nosocomial infections are going to happen despite everyone's best efforts. No one is trying to make patients sick!

As a patient, it's your job to watch and ensure infection control protocols are being followed around you - that your doctor washes her/his hands, that you are properly sterilized prior to blood draws / catheter placement etc. It's hugely important.

Christy, you're right. My dad was in and out of the hospital for the last 18 months of his life, I couldn't believe how many health care "professionals" did not wash their handsuse hand sanitizer before coming into the room! That's how things get spread from patient to patient!

Yep, those $12 dollar aspirins need to get sold.

Nope, the hospital does NOT make more money due to hospital acquired infections. In fact, they LOSE money.

It can cost tens of thousands of dollars to treat a single hospital acquired infection - that cost the hospital itself often has to 'eat'.

Medicare does not reimburse hospitals for treatment of infections considered 'nosocomial'... or hospital acquired. Hospitals put loads of time, effort, and money into infection control training and practices for their personnel for this reason, aside from the obvious wanting to do what's best for the patient as well.

Believe me, it is NOT in the best financial interest of any hospital to have patients get infections while in their facility.

And, yes, I completely agree with Christy... a lot of this can and should be prevented by the healthcare personnel in direct contact with the patients... nurses, doctors, radiology technicians, respiratory therapists.

Many hospitals encourage their direct patient care employees to 'police' each other ... remind each other to maintain appropriate infection control practices.

Call home land security more we are being attacked by terrorist bacteria!!

So you'd rather have MORE people end up in hospitals (and more people therefore die due to hospital infections, which would increase as hospitals become more overburdened) because people don't get routine vaccinations and the sparse ones like swine flu? I don't get it. You portray the swine flu vaccine as an abomination of civil rights (which again, I don't understand because it wasn't mandatory, only recommended), yet you counter by saying more people die in hospitals. Pick a side -- either get your vaccinations, stay free of disease, and stay out of the hospital or risk infection outside the hospital, and once you go, you risk more infection in the hospital.

You can't have it both ways! You can't hate on vaccines but then also rail against infection inside a hospital. Why is the AMA at fault here? Get your vaccination and stay out of the hospitals so you don't run the risk of accidental infection. OF COURSE there's more infection at a hospital. Most of the people in there are sick, afterall!

Martial law? Hardly. There's more panic at a toy store the day before Xmas. If you really do "rescind" your consent, when you do get sick, do us all a favor and just stay home and avoid being a hypocrite when you crawl back to the doctors and ask them to make you better.

All you'll do is complain and complain until you're legitimately sick, then you'll be back at the hospital to get better again.

And I'd hardly call it murder if the infections floating around a hospital cause you to get sick. Bacteria and viruses are everywhere, including hospitals. THE DOCTORS AREN'T INFECTING YOU, THE OTHER PATIENTS ARE! Murder? Yeah right.

Well, how do you get the infections from the other patients???? Generally speaking you don't visit, kiss, or share things with the patient down the hall. It's called the doctors and nurses or surgical equipment/room doing it for you. Not murder, but what a joke. We've created the superbugs....

It's called shared pathways. Two kids go into the bathroom, they pick up each other's germs, and spread them to the patients they're there to see. Germs live on floors, sinks, etc. Not just on doctors' hands.

Doctors scrub in. Utensils? Sterilized before use. Visitors? Off the street. Seems to me one of these things breeds germs...gee, which one?

Sorry Dr.'s don't scrub, and house keeping doesn't always Sterilized. It's a known fact that Dr.s necktie carries most of the infection from patients to patients. Over the Past 20 years the Hospitals have lower the standard of cleaning in order to cut cost in staff. Once up on a time.....Hospital were the cleanness place to be. There is sooo much more to this problem than the write-up says.

Maybe we should start hosing down visitors, Dr's. and staff before they can enter room. Have a mist cleaner at every door. joking...the sad really part is many people do die from what they didn't go to the hospital for, all for the mighty dollar.

I didn't say they WEAR scrubs. I said they scrub in to operating rooms, etc. There's a difference.

I agree with you, though, that the idea of "hospital clean" has regressed to "janitorial clean". It's not just enough to spread the filth around with a mop. Sanitization could alleviate some, but not all, of these kinds of death. Unless you restrict visitors from the outside, pathogens will always find their next victim, and it's not the doctors that are bringing them in necessarily.

Gee, I don't know. Tell me how MRSA was on a heart valve put in a patient, who was only 17 years old. An infection which killed him. Hmmm, doesn't seem to me the infection was from the visitor off the street....I'm not saying germs can't come from the visitor, but hey, sepsis from your guests??? I doubt it. We were told in nursing school that we couldn't have fake nails (which is fine, I don't have them anyway) due to babies in a NICU who died and it was linked to the nurses fingernails. But gee, I guess I wouldn't know anything about infection control....

OF COURSE there are going to be exceptions.

But to conclude that this is the rule rather than the exception takes way more out of context than you could possibly gather about this one statistic in the article. Yes, there are going to be medical mistakes -- we are human, afterall. But, to say that doctors are responsible for 48,000 infections in patients is just absurd.

I agree.

more federal regs? yeah, THAT'll help...

No, turn lawyers loose on the facilities that have the worst record and then things will likely change. Survival of the fittest works in society as well as nature.

It would be a pretty case to prove by a proponderence of the evidence if the issue were placed in front of a jury.

Agree. I use to defend doctors in med/mal litigation prior to my retirement and saw many a horror story. Plaintiff attorneys were my mortal enemies but I guarantee you not much would be done unless defendants were faced with possible liability for their actions/inaction. Granted, there are some frivolous lawsuits but in many states the plaintff needs a certificate of merit from a medical expert when their action is filed to help weed these out plus several states have caps on non-economic damages,i.e., pain and suffering awards. Don't believe all the hype about tort reform.When you or your loved ones are victims, you'll change your thinking quickly.

thats great thinking. just sue. wow and i guess all that should hold down cost of the hospitals and other medical bills..yep smart thinking

It may not hold down costs but it may save some lives,maybe even yours some day. How much is your life worth to you?You don't even understand what I'm saying,do you.

TOTALLY INCORRECT. the institution is penalized financially for any length of stay more than average.

ALL are at work to prevent all possible infections/complications.

To play the blame game against those people and institutions that care for you will result in a lose lose proposition.

Hospitals the safest place to go? That's a fatally incorrect assumption.

Hospitals can be one of the most dangerous places one can be in. Patients need medically wise advocates at their bedside when at their most ill to ensure all is done correctly in their best interest.

As an RN, I have intervened when necessary to avoid patient injury from mistakes that happen in hospitals. Hospital pharmacies often make mistakes that, if not caught by the RN distributing the patient's meds, can have horrible consequences... and please, don't get me started on incorrect Doctor's orders that I've had to call the Doc back on and get corrected!

..... if only people really knew what goes on ...... It's quite scary.

Doug-I was going to say the same thing. 16 times as many as 911. Where's the commissions on how to prevent this tragedy. Why isn't congress pounding the table saying who's responsible.
And don't even get me started on how many people die from smoking and smoking related diseases.

It's not as if the hospital can be fogged down every night with sporacidal agents to reduce the spread of disease...patients have to live. Infections are everywhere, including hospitals. Let's just face facts: Hospitals are a place in which diseases fester. Even if all doctors wash their hands (I would say that 99% do every time), the patients and visitors might not. Are we really going to say it's all the hospital's or doctors' fault if the diseases are more than likely spread by those that don't work for the hospitals? Afterall, pretty much anyone can be visited by those that just came in off the street. Doctors are in dedicated uniforms. Are we really placing all the blame on hospitals and doctors? REALLY?

Look at percents. What percent of the people at ground zero died. What percent is that 3000?

The 48K is less then one percent.

Doug's right. Send homeland security after them!

48,000 died from infection other than the reason they were admitted to the hospital add the number of people who died from wrong treatment or wrong medication and the side effects of drugs(at least 100,000) and you have more people dying from health care than died in 911 and both wars and that is just in one year. I don't know about the rest of you but to me these numbers make me want to avoid so call health care at all cost!!

Also, they were only researching TWO specific infection's. The 48,000 death's were a result of patient's acquiring Sepsis or Pneumonia! You may feel like this is trivial, until you end up responsible for paying a bill for an additional 14 day stay - not to mention the physical and mental anguish caused by the infection.

It is totally unacceptable that patient's are put at such a high risk of contracting some sort of infection due to negligence and disregard of proper sanitation. I can't believe that they would have the audacity to bill the patient for the time and care that is necessary to cure them of an infection that they were responsible for. I sure as heck wouldn't put up with that sort of billing from my auto mechanic... "Yeh, we got your oil changed, but while we were in there we damaged the radiator somehow. So, it's gonna be a couple more days before you can get your car, and your bill is $600 instead of $30!" Why should I be subjected to such outrageous behavior from the medical field?

Negligence and disregard? I don't know if I would go that far. How clean or sanitized can you be when anyone can just waltz in and visit anyone? You'd have to scrub constantly to rid the place of germs.

Let's just face it: the best way to avoid hospitals is to avoid getting sick in the first place. Wash your hands, get your shots, and avoid sick people.

Why should I be subjected to such outrageous behavior from the medical field?

Because it's not just the doctors' or hospital's fault that these things occur. They can't prevent a sneezing, coughing person from waltzing in and contaminating things like doorknobs, etc. There's only so much that routine sanitization can pick up.

The same thing is 37 out of a million plus automobiles sold.

If someone you love is among that 48,000, suddenly it's not so tiny.

Same with 3,000.

I'm a surgeon. I use an alcohol-based antiseptic before and after examining every patient that I care for. What you are saying is that because a nurse, a food-server, or even an environmentalist (janitor) may not do so and as a result seeds one of my patients with a bacteria, that I deserve to be sued. That's a very interesting policy idea.

Maybe if doctors didnt have to pay thousands of dolllars in malpractice insurance they wouldnt have to try and treat so many people to make a buck and would have the time to wash thier hands. I do believe a lot of docters are overworked and this could be part of the problem. Also if there is a ceiling on lawsuits it should bring down medical cost which is a priorty in health reform which the democrat version has no cost cutting.

Nosocomial infections are not covered under Medicare; they are insisting that the facility pay.

Why do people automatically assume that "physicians don't wash their hands"?

How silly. Try to learn about the many(!) methods of transmission of pathogens.

Remember that you have staph on your skin 24/7. Remember that the air has 'bugs'. Think about all the people involved in the hospital environment. Think about all the visitors trudging through a hospital on any given day.

Think about how many people who have surgery are already in a weakened state.

If you think that physicians are all money-hungry, dirty slobs then you are myopic.

Medicine isn't an exact science.

These arguments ignore the over-use of antibiotics in animal feed that causes the spread of antibiotic-resistant staph infections. Any time there is an infection, the attitude is, throw more antibiotic at it. Sure, it is necessary, but first wash hands, clean rooms, clean beds and linens, do not let people work who are sick, etc. Staph is on the skin all the time, but not MRSA which is caught in hospitals, not present ordinarily. And after surgery, in America, patients are given the boot just a couple of hours after surgery, and nobody monitors their recovery. They may take all their medicine, but if the meds don't work, they may be too much in a fog to notice. My daughter suffered sepsis and survived luckily, but the surgeon had to lance the rotten pus out of the wound in the post-op visit. Luckily, she has a strong enough constitution to have survived the experience. There are no medical persons who monitor recovery between the hospital and follow-up a couple of weeks later. Sepsis does not always present with fever.

Tort reform would also effect cases of negligence on the part of hospitals and nurses -not just Doctors- as you know full well, Doc Joe P. (It would also affect product liability cases - a much more important motivator for its proponents)

Tort reform will decrease the overhead for Doctors and hospitals by diminishing their insurance premiums. This in general is a good thing, but don't expect the savings to be passed down to the consumers. Also, tort reform will not eliminate "defensive medicine" -a claim that it's proponents often make. Whether its for $5,000,000.00 or $50,000.00, doctors don't want to be sued, and will continue to cover themselves even if caps on awards are enacted.

Yes....and the pigs work in the hospitals .....called staff.......get it.....staff infection.....rightly named I say......

I feel for your loss. However, if you look at how many people are treated at all hospitals in this country over the course of a year, the number would be staggering. Thus, 48000 out of say 50 million (an arbitrarily picked number that I would contend is conservative) represents a percentage of 0.00096%. Tired of silly may have come across as callous, but the point of his or her comments are true.

Most germs are carried through hospitals from nurses/doctors not washing their hands or using a new pair of gloves with each patient.

This is your unsubstantiated opinion.

My great aunt died from MRSA in a nursing home. No wonder, one employee came in, thinking I would be impressed, and was hugging and kissing all over my aunt! They're filthy places and filthy people that don't wash their hands between patients...

Joe, you need to buy yourself a calculator. -A surgeon that can't even calculate simple mathematical risks -now that's dangerous!

Actually, it is Bush's fault.

Bingo! You both are right.

Well stated.

The plain truth is that the practice of medicine is just that: a "practice". No two people react the same way. No two people have the same immune systems. And, of course..people make mistakes too.

The miracle is the number of people who are saved every day.

All anyone with a casual interest need do is look at the life expectancy of these times compared with even 75 years ago.

But, it is much easier to place blame and accusations, isn't it?

Wow you have a lot to say~ Please give me a 39 year old woman who lived through MRSA which I contracted when I had an ACL surgery your words of wisdom. I have spent thousands of dollars on 9 additional surgeries, medication, doctors visits (when I could find one who would treat MRSA patients), the replaced ACL is gone, and I need a knee replacement. I am sure that will not be the end of this horrific journey. And guess what NO ONE- not the surgeon or hospital has done a stinking thing to pay for ANY of the expenses that I have incurred since that day. And they and the government could care less about those of us who lived and those who have died. It is apparent that you are one of those people.

Two years ago, @ 49 yrs old, I went into septic shock and had to be rushed to the hospital. The culprit was an infection in my left hip socket. The hospital tried ortoscopically to remove the infection,that didn't work so they operated two days later. during my "recovery" I contracted MSRA. Then they decided to clean out the hip joint a third time that week, another 12 in. scar. thirty days later I was released from this Boston hospital, bed bound and on an antibiotic pump 24/7 for another month.Even though I contracted MRSA in the hospital and it almost killed me, Iam extremely grateful to live in a society and a time that can deal with these problems and I survived. Several healthcare profesionals suggested I"sue". I did NOT sue because they actually saved me from my original septic shock. The general public and suit happy lawyers need to take a chill pill and put their energies into fixing the problems at the hospitals instead of reaping the financial rewards from a lawsuit. Driving up the cost of health care is not in the interest of the country. Don't get me started on the total ineptitude of lawyers!

The general public is often unaware that MRSA exists outside of the hospital setting. It used to be a pathogen specific to the nursing home setting, then the hospital setting... now, you can pretty much pick up MRSA anywhere... a restaurant, an elevator button in an office, a telephone... ANYWHERE.

Some people may have picked it up from outside the hospital and not even know that they are carriers. The only time an MRSA infection may raise its ugly head is when the immune system of the unknowing carrier is affected... by another illness or traumatic event such as surgery. The MRSA will then 'settle' in the compromised area causing an infection and disease. I personally don't believe that all MRSA infections are hospital acquired nowadays. Some are, but many are not.

As someone that spent a month in a hospital, pneumonia is controlled with regular walking and breathing exercises. The instant you wake up from general anaesthesia, you and the ten inch stapled wound in your abdomen are drummed up for a walk. The trouble is that most patients are too lazy to walk themselves and would prefer to just lay there and stay as long as possible.

Hospitals are a very dangerous place. Get out as soon as possible.

no, you probably have 100X the risk of being killed in a car accident than being killed by a hospital acquired infection.

OMG, the automakers, the state troopers, the sign painters must be NEGLIGENT!!!

43,000 people die every year in MVAs.

Millions more hospitalized.

But, no one is blaming auto makers for vehicles that can do 145 MPH.

Seems kind of ignorant, doesn't it?

There are about 43,000 deaths caused by car accidents per year. You wrote the 48,000 deaths caused by hospital acquired infections is 100 times less than the 43,000 deaths a year by car accidents! Also most people drive every day but get an operation only a few times in their lifetime. You can factor that in if you like.

Your extremely gross denial of the problem is typical of the medical culture. The thick denial inherent in your medical culture is why the problem gets worse every year. You don't do anything about it because you've already denied the problem exists. Then you attack the news media or anyone else who shines a light on the true facts.

It's time you and the rest of the medical industry got off it's high horse, brought it's sky-high overinflated ego back to earth, opened it's eyes and started dealing with the real reality it created. And stop camouflaging the problem and stop framing unnecessary deaths under accepted risks. In short, there is a problem and your attitude is the direct reason it doesn't get better.

I guess that some of us here have never made a mistake in their lives.

That's why I am not a physician.

I don't have the nerve to work on actual human beings.

If I am working on equipment and I make a mistake, (and I do) then no one gets sick.

Do you think that the nick on J. Murtha's colon was intentional?

"I guess we should surgery in the street." sketchbone

Yikes, and you're a surgeon? You must have graduated at the bottom of your class. You can't even write a grammatically correct sentence.

Rather, let's put the frivolous lawsuit attorneys in jail. Maybe my malpractice would be less than 60k/year.

Maybe this misleading article writer should be put in jail.

Your attitude, if shared by more, will result in a greater shortage of physicians. Stay tuned.

sketchbone ...it is time we all talked .....hospitals make way too much money to treat people so badly....and kill so many.

Who needs bad treatment by people who do not care....better a shortage than killers.

sketchbone - frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits are a really big myth by your medical culture to get laws passed to make suing bad doctors even more difficult than it is now. In states that have had malpractice caps put into law, the result made about 1% difference, and then the rate of increase in premiums continued as normal.

Lawyers are business men who get many more opportunities than they have time for. They choose legal cases to maximize profit. There is no profit in a frivolous lawsuit because the judge would decide against it.

Lawyers aren't the problem. Bad doctors are the problem. Statistically, a small percentage of doctors across all specialties cause the majority of the malpractice lawsuits. Instead of attacking the victim and keeping the victim from getting a remedy, why don't you get rid of the bad doctors?

since most of the post-op care is given by nursing staff, changing post-op dressings, doing catheter care, handling meds that you put in your mouth, i feel the real cause of infections are the nurses who do not wash their hands as they should. I have worked in several hospitals and when the infectious disease people come in and swab surfaces, including nurses hands, guess what? the nurses hands harbor the most infections. I myself was the victim of post-op infections and had to have a second surgery to debride all the infected tissue, my "second incision" had to be scrubbed and packed 3 times a day and did not heal for six months after the original procedure, I did the sterile scrubs and packing myself as I would not allow anyone else to do it for fear of getting another infections, also had to be on 4 antibiotics for months to get the infection cleared up. what a nightmare.