Are Hospital Acquired Infections Preventable?
If you have a hospital acquired infection, you may have new rights. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta estimates that there are over two million hospital acquired infections each year resulting in 90,000 deaths. There may be another million infections acquired in long-term care facilities. New evidence has surfaced that almost all these infections are preventable if hospitals and long-term care facilities would follow proven protocols. Some of these rules are as simple as washing hands between patient visits. New guidelines and rules are raising the standard of care that hospitals must follow to prevent these infections. Beginning October 1, 2008,Medicare stopped paying for preventable infections. In October,The Joint Commission, a non-profit organization that evaluates and accredits hospitals, released a compendium of strategies for preventing infections. Hospitals can no longer argue there is nothing that can be done to prevent these infections. We know that han
