Every year almost 100,000 people die in U.S. hospitals and nursing homes from infections they got after they checked in. Now, a new Web site will reveal those numbers publicly for the first time.
The state of Ohio is about to launch a Web site as part of an answer to a problem the I-Team first brought to your attention in May. People who have even minor surgery, but then die from an infection they got at the hospital.
The site, set to launch January 1, 2010, will make information available that's never been public before. Hospitals have kept rates private until now.
Kacia Warren says it's about time. Her mother, Ruth Burns, died at age 67 after minor, outpatient surgery. Warren blames an infection Burns contracted during surgery. "It was a nightmare, a catastrophic event in my life," she says.
It's a problem consumer advocate and former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey says is rampant. But she has a solution she thinks will prevent hospital-acquired infections: Requiring hospitals to report their infection rates publicly. She says, "If you have to be hospitalized you should be able to find out which hospital in your own area has the worst infection rates so you can stay away."
Nancy Oliver agrees. She's a consumer advocate who lost her father after he too got an infection following surgery. She's been working with Ohio's Department of Health and others to get consumers access to information hospitals have kept private 'til now. She say, "If you or I would like to buy a car or a major appliance we could find a bunch of information," but not when it comes to information about how hospitals compare on various procedures.
Kaliyah Shaheen is a health planning administrator for the Ohio Department of Health. She recently gave the I-Team an exclusive look at a new Web site that will be available to the public January first. She says, "The new Web site will allow consumers to view all the hospitals, or compare just the hospitals in their area. They can select by procedure type or even by looking at Children's versus adults."
Shaheen says you can also type in particular hospitals to find all their rates. "This is providing transparency that we hadn't had in the past. So infection rates and mortality rates, process measures which provide whether or not the hospitals are doing the things that they should do to prevent certain things from happening, or certain bad outcomes from happening. All of that will be transparent through this Web site."
The site has collected data from every hospital in the state over the last year. There is a laundry list of measure types including stroke, pregnancy, infection, and the like. The site also will show rates of proven preventative steps hospitals can take so you can check, for example for heart attack, how often the hospital gave aspirin when a patient arrived, or if it gave a beta blocker.
Shaheen says the site won't answer every question. But it's a big step in helping people make decisions. "We are not saying that one hospital is better than another but we are saying that based on the information that they provided us, this is the hospital that is at the top of the list and this is the hospital that is at the bottom and from top to bottom with the Ohio average falling in wherever it happened to be."
For consumers like Nancy Oliver and Kacia Warren the Web site presents a victory, and some meaning if their losses create a lasting impact on us all.
