Fitness Files: Your health may be in your hands
Last Saturday, I walked out of a meeting with a doctor-friend who said, “I’m tired of the TV news hysteria about Ebola. Do you know how many die of hospital-born infections every year, just because medical staff doesn’t follow hand-washing protocols?”
A 2013 Healthline article with statistics from the Alliance for Aging Research answers the question:
•1.7 million Americans develop hospital-acquired infections every year and 99,000 die of them.
•The U.S. medical cost of caring for these patients “may be as high as $45 billion” yearly.
•In 2012, the antibiotic resistant MRSA infection killed more Americans than emphysema, HIV/AIDS and Parkinson’s and homicide combined.
Patients in danger of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) are the elderly and a growing number of patients on immune-suppressing drugs for Crohn’s, arthritis, M.S., alopecia, psoriasis and transplants, among others.
Since penicillin’s advent in the 1940s, we’ve had the luxury of thinking antibiotics cure all infections.
Not so today.
Dr. Victoria Fraser, chairwoman of Washington School of Medicine, St. Louis, says, “[T]here are some serious infections with resistant bacteria that are virtually untreatable.”
New antibiotics are not being developed, according to Fraser, because “[t]here are not good incentives for antibiotic manufacturers,” due to the low reimbursement rate and heavy USDA approval regulations.
Hospitals, too, look to reimbursement rates. Insurance reimburses for technology and patient treatments, but not for staff education on infection prevention.
An online review of hospital procedures to prevent HIAs always lists hand-washing first. Then, improved practices for central line catheters. Next comes careful cleaning of rooms and medical equipment.
Sounds like common sense.
Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says fighting the hospital infection epidemic is a “winnable battle…[with] several published projects [showing] up to 70% reduction…” in infected patients.
During my parents’ stays at a major community hospital, my problem was getting a nurse to check the beeping cardiac monitor. Nurses were nearby but engrossed in making computer entries. I never thought to observe hand-washing practices.
Fraser’s final paragraphs are cautionary: Reduced Medicare and Medicaid payments to hospitals are causing “great pressure, so we are at risk of losing doctors and nurses and having hospitals close…Yet prevention takes time, people and resources…”
According to my doctor-friend, it takes half an hour to suit up before entering the room of an Ebola patient. Hand-washing and sterile cleaning of routine hospital patients seems easy compared to the Ebola treatment plan. Wouldn’t it be a positive outcome of Ebola if new antibiotics were developed and hospitals awarded money to implement proven procedures preventing hospital acquired infections?
In the meantime, the Assn. for Professionals in Infection Control tells patients to:
•Shower with germ-killing soap pre-surgery.
•Clean your hands and ask staff and visitors to do so.
•Sneeze and cough into your elbow, not hand.
•Request hospital room cleanup if needed.
•Ask daily if you still need a catheter.
•One needle, one syringe, one time.
The final sentence in the above list is “Speak up for your care!”
That may be difficult. Patients are often in a weakened state. My doctor-friend is correct. News outlets should be trumpeting the need for supporting hospital infectious disease prevention. Ninety-nine thousand hospital deaths is too many.
Newport Beach resident CARRIE LUGER SLAYBACK is a retired teacher who ran the Los Angeles Marathon at age 70, winning first place in her age group. Her blog is lazyracer@blogspot.com.