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The easiest step? Hand washing. The Centers for Disease Control based in Atlanta says half of hospital infections could be prevented if caregivers cleaned their hands before touching patients, but 60% of health care workers don't do so.
The Leapfrog Group cited earlier says "65% of U.S. hospitals do not take recommended steps to prevent avoidable infections." Its study found that on average, "hospital-acquired infections add more than $15,000 to a patient's hospital bill, amounting to more than $30 billion a year wasted on avoidable costs."
Area hospitals say they take the issue seriously. Colleen O’Toole, the president of the Greater Cincinnati Health Council, representing area hospitals says, "We are committed to improving what we do in the community for our patients."
O’Toole put together a panel of experts - infection control specialists, hospital administrators, doctors and nurses - to discuss the issue with the I-Team. She called their biggest challenge, “for all of us to work together."
Dr. Randy Randolph serves as chief medical officer for the Mercy hospital sytem. He says,"We’re talking culture changes really. It is tough, it’s just tough to change culture. But we have to do that."
The panelists, including Dr. Stephen Blatt, an Infectious disease practioner and president of the Cincinnati Academy of Medicine, Jane Swain, Vice-President of Nursing for St. Elizabeth and Mary Nicholson, a nurse and Infection Control Practitioner, pointed to individual success stories that reduced infection rates in limited areas. While they’ve worked together on those limited projects, O’Toole says, "Each of the hospitals individually has their own infection control program."
But there’s no coordinated effort systemwide yet. O’Toole says, "We have adopted a program where we are going to, this year, start sharing best practices."
McCaughey says that’s not enough."Numerous hospitals have reduced their infection rates by 90% in pilot programs with cleaning and screening,” she says, including a hospital in Pittsburgh that slashed its infections through an intense top to bottom review several years ago.
And it’s not just in the United States. McCaughey until a few years ago, Denmark, Holland and Finland had similar rates of infection to ours; they now have have rates below 1%, after changing the way they intake patients. How?
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