Ruth Burns was looking forward to a wonderful month. First, her daughter was getting married. Then Burns would retire from her job as a registered nurse and fulfill her passion for travel.
To get ready for both life-changing events, Burns decided to have outpatient back surgery to correct a pinched nerve in her back. She’d be in and out of the hospital in one day, then recover at home for three to five days.
"It was supposed to be very minor, low risk,” says Burn’s daughter Kacia Warren. “And it was something that would make life a lot simpler, easier for her to get around. So we just didn’t have a care in the world really."
But Burns never recovered from that minor surgery. Seventeen days later, she was dead at age 67.
Warren says, "She was healthy when she went through those (hospital) doors, and when I saw her again she was never the same.” Warren says she sat in the hospital “cancelling wedding plans and making funeral arrangements all in the same day."
What killed Burns? Her autopsy shows she died of an infection at the site of the surgery from a bacteria with “multiple drug resistance.” Warren is convinced her mother was infected “immediately upon surgery. I kissed my mom a happy and healthy goodbye and I don’t know what happened behind those doors."
Every year, 100,000 people die from infections they get in a hospital, nursing home or other medical facility. That’s more people than die of AIDS, breast cancer and car accidents combined.
Many others contract infections but recover. The cost of this extra medical care runs into $30-billion a year, according to Leapfrog Group, a company that represents corporations and agencies who buy health insurance.
In the vast majority of cases, the deaths are preventable. While most of us assume hospitals to be safe and sterile, they are of course full of sick patients, many of whom carry bacteria on their skin when they arrive. In fact, all of us carry some bacteria all the time. It’s safe for most of us as long as it stays on our skin. But if it enters our body through a cut or incision, it can become deadly.
Consumer advocates say that happens all too often. The former lieutenant governor of New York, Betsy McCaughey says “It would be very reasonable to guess that at least one out of every ten patients contracts an infection.”
McCaughey works full time as an advocate for tougher laws and standards to reduce the number of infections people get in medical facilities. She says, "We have the knowledge to prevent these infections but what has been lacking is the will. We know that with adequate cleaning of these hospitals, screening of patients for particular bacteria such as MRSA, we can reduce these infections by 90%. And it’s affordable. The data show that hospitals actually become more profitable by taking these steps."
