ShareThisLAS VEGAS - After a Las Vegas Sun investigation found more than 2,000 hospital patients were infected with lethal bacterium, the state board of health is slated to change the law on Friday.
Thousands of patients were infected in one of the 13 acute-care area hospitals by the lethal bacterium MRSA or Clostridium difficile, known as C. diff, in 2008 and 2009. The bacteria are often called "superbugs" because they are resistant to many antibiotics.
Two hundred thirty-nine of the infected patients died, the Sun found, although it's impossible to tell from the hospital billing records examined by the Sun how or whether the infections factored in the patients' deaths.
The resistance to public reporting of infections is a nationwide issue, and data collection methods are so haphazard, even within the federal government, that it's unclear whether anyone understands the scope of the problem.
Maryn McKenna, author of "Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA," said hospitals nationally know how many patients are infected within their walls but they keep the information from the public.
"The reporting we require from the health care system is not transparent or accountable," McKenna said.
The National Healthcare Safety Network allows hospitals to report infections with the assurance that the information will remain anonymous, McKenna said.
State laws vary in terms of the types of data gathered and the level of transparency, she said, and many states' efforts are hampered by budget problems. The result is that consumers can't tell where they might be at risk, where outbreaks are occurring or how to do comparison shopping, McKenna said.
Nevada Sen. Shirley Breeden understands the patient suffering caused by hospital-acquired infections. While she was in Carson City last year championing a bill to require stricter reporting of such cases, her father was battling a Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, infection he contracted in a Las Vegas hospital.
The bill passed, but Breeden is disappointed it won't lead to the transparency needed to make hospitals' reports meaningful for the public.
When Breeden, a Henderson Democrat, met with lobbyists in March 2009 to discuss Senate Bill 319, they told her they would block any legislation that allowed infections to be identified by individual facilities, she said.
To get lobbyists for physicians and hospitals to support reporting by hospitals, she had to promise the information would not be made public.
On Friday, the Nevada Board of Health is slated to adopt those regulations for the new law. But Nevada health officials are inviting hospitals to voluntarily disclose their infection numbers.
It's "really sad" when doctors and hospitals don't want people to know about the quality of care, Breeden said. "We're the ones who are in there. Our lives are entrusted to them."
The Sun's report is the first time the number of MRSA or C. diff infections at individual Las Vegas hospitals has been reported.
The regulations stemming from SB319 would require hospitals to report MRSA cases, certain surgical site infections and bloodstream infections related to central-line catheters -- flexible tubes used to inject medicine deep into the body -- to the National Healthcare Safety Network, a program run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Nevada State Health Division originally proposed facility-specific reporting, but that was rejected by the Legislative Council Bureau because the language in Breeden's bill does not specifically mandate it.
Still, the Nevada Health Division isn't giving up. Early this week agency officials sent a letter to hospital administrators asking for permission to report the information for their respective facilities. Hospitals that want their infections to be made public can give the state permission to report them, said Marla McDade Williams, deputy administrator of the division.
Hospitals have fought facility-specific reporting of infections since 2002, when the state legislature passed a law requiring the reporting of sentinel events - injuries and infections that take place in hospitals. But since the Sun published the first story in its investigative series, "Do No Harm: Hospital Care in Las Vegas," St. Rose Dominican Hospitals and University Medical Center have agreed to publish all their quality-of-care information, including hospital-acquired infections. Other hospitals have refused.
Across the country, the problem exists because the various reporting systems have been developed independently and do not mesh together to become useful, she said. And it's all been created under the influence of political lobbying, she added.
"There is a profound influence exerted by the hospital industry, the medical industry and the professional associations," McKenna said. "They do exert influence on the legislative process."
Dr. Bill Jarvis, who worked for the CDC for 23 years and led its hospital-infection program, said he questions the reliability of data reported to the National Healthcare Safety Network.
Good infection reporting is paradoxical, Jarvis said. If a hospital wants to look better when compared with others, it might disband its infection-control program so fewer are identified.
In years past, the National Healthcare Safety Network had strict requirements for hospitals that reported infections, Jarvis said: Each had to have a dedicated infection-control program, proper staffing and administrative support. This helped ensure the quality of the data being reported, he said.
Since many states have adopted the CDC's network as their de facto reporting mechanism, as Nevada has, the number of hospitals using the network has jumped from about 400 to more than 2,600. That has muddied the quality of the information, Jarvis said.
Meanwhile, there is no process to validate the data, he said.
"It's basically left up to the states to determine if they want to verify (the data)," Jarvis said.
Breeden is disappointed that the information reported by Nevada hospitals to the CDC network will not be made public, but she's not giving up. Legislators will make health care a primary focus of the 2011 session, she said, and will take up public reporting of infections.
"We will win in the long run," she said.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit Las Vegas Sun
WTF
"When Breeden, a Henderson Democrat, met with lobbyists in March 2009 to discuss Senate Bill 319, they told her they would block any legislation that allowed infections to be identified by individual facilities, she said"
who is the legislator here and how do Lobbyists get to "Block" a bill?
Incidentally PA, NY, NJ, FL, MA, and many others all have public reporting with the hospitals named. The world did not end, but suddenly hospitals did start working to reduce their infeciton rates.
Poor reporting
The reporter of this story has made one very bad mistake, evident in the opening sentences. Mr. Allen indicates that MRSA and Clostridium difficile are one and the same organism. This is NOT thwe case. MRSA stands for Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, a particularly dangerous strain of Staph. aureus. Clostridium difficile (or C. diff.) may also resistant to methicillin and other antibiotics, but it is NOT the same bug, nor is it acquired in the same way. It is also treated differently.
This kind of error comes from having reporters with little or no scientific background who are asked to cover medical news. Please either hire someone who has had some biology or have someone competent proof read it before it goes out.
I think you are missing the point.
Regards of the infection the point of the story is we need better stats and accountability in reporting of infectious dieases.
Good infection reporting is
Good infection reporting is paradoxical, Jarvis said. If a hospital wants to look better when compared with others, it might disband its infection-control program so fewer are identified. iPod Converter, ipod converter, mp4 converter, convert all to ipod, mp4, iphone, ipad