October 2004
Hospital infections: Consumers drive a movement Two Missouri residents are the latest examples of the power of consumers when they band together, in this case to work with Consumers Union's campaign for the public disclosure of hospital-acquired infections. Ray Wagner never planned to become a consumer advocate for patient safety. His teenaged son, Raymond, got an infection in late 2002 while being treated at a Missouri hospital for a broken arm. After six surgeries related to the infection and treatment with antibiotics, Raymond has almost recovered. His father has put his experience as a business lobbyist to work to stop hospital-acquired infections. Kim Gardner, also in Missouri, lost her mother in 1999 to a staph infection she got at a hospital after having survived bypass surgery. “I was forced to make the hardest decision I will ever make, which was to take my mother off the ventilator and let her go in peace,” Gardner says. Her grief and anger spurred a personal-letter-writing campaign to policymakers, urging tracking and reporting of hospital-acquired infections. The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 90,000 Americans die each year from infections they get in the hospital. Between 5 and 10 percent of the patients who are admitted to U.S. acute-care hospitals acquire one or more infections there, and the risks have steadily increased in recent decades, according to a February 2003 article in The New England Journal of Medicine. Only a handful of hospitals voluntarily report infections to the government, and that information is confidential. Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports, initiated the Stop Hospital Infections campaign to support public disclosure of infection rates because it will give hospitals stronger incentives to reduce infection risks. It will also help consumers make informed decisions so that they can protect themselves and their families. Wagner and Gardner, who hadn't known each other, found our campaign's Web site, StopHospitalInfections.org, and contacted us. We put them in touch with each other, and they joined forces with state Sen. Sarah Steelman and Rep. Robert Schaaf, who had sponsored hospital-infections-disclosure bills. Missourians sent more than 600 e-mail messages in support of the bill to their legislators and governor, and it was passed in May 2004. The Missouri effort is part of a growing movement to address hospital infections: • A Florida coalition of employers, insurers, and consumers successfully pushed to make an array of hospital information available to consumers and employers, including hospital-infection rates. When an infection-reporting requirement was targeted for removal from a larger bill, CU asked Floridians to support the requirement; they did, sending more than 2,500 e-mail messages to legislators. The bill, including the requirement, passed in April. • California state Sen. Jackie Speier introduced a hospital-infections-disclosure bill that was passed by the senate in May 2004 and was pending at press time. We had asked consumers to support its passage; they sent more than 14,000 e-mail messages to legislators. Some people who had told us their infection stories testified at hearings and spoke to the news media. • A Pennsylvania state agency, using an existing public-health law, is collecting data from hospitals on incidences of several types of infections. It plans to publish hospital-specific data at some point. The most compelling voices bringing this deadly health issue to the forefront have been those of consumers. They are the backbone of our campaign. |
