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Allentown And Pennsylvanians Contracted Infections In Hospitals
Nearly 12,000 Pennsylvanians contracted infections during a hospital stay in 2004, costing an extra $2 billion in care and at least 1,500 preventable deaths, according to state figures released yesterday that officials say represent a conservative measure of one of the deadliest problems in modern medicine.
As health care spending has skyrocketed, employers, which often pay the bills, have begun pressing hospitals to work to reduce a variety of mistakes — from incorrect medications to avoidable infections — to improve care and reduce costs. As part of that effort, Pennsylvania began last year to require every acute care hospital to report the number of infections contracted in the hospital in four major categories: surgical, bloodstream, pneumonia and urinary tract.
The mortality rate was highest — 32 percent — for patients who developed pneumonia while using a ventilator. The most common were urinary tract infections transmitted to patients using a catheter. The average cost to treat a Pennsylvania hospital patient who developed an infection was $29,000, compared with $8,300 for those who did not, the report found.
Hospital executives cautioned that they are still working out the kinks in the data collection, and stressed that many efforts are underway to reduce preventable infections and other errors.
"Can we do better? Absolutely," said Elliot J. Sussman, president and chief executive of Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network in Allentown, Pa. "And this report can be a stimulus to do so."
In Pennsylvania, state officials and industry executives haggled over the numbers, particularly the report's estimate that the tally of hospital-acquired infections may be as high as 115,000.
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