Infections from hospitals are down, feds say

Infections and other health problems caused by hospitals dropped 17% from 2010 to 2014, which prevented 87,000 deaths and saved $20 billion in health care costs, federal health officials said Tuesday.

The new report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services follows a report last December that showed 50,000 fewer patients died in hospitals and $12 billion was saved from 2010 through 2012.

Hospital-acquired conditions include adverse drug events, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, central line-associated bloodstream infections, pressure ulcers, and surgical site infections, CMS says.

Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell credited the Affordable Care Act and its financial incentives for hospitals that improve the quality of care and an industry-government partnership that helps hospitals share the best ways to reduce infections.

Safety advocates had varied reactions. Leah Binder, CEO of the hospital rating group Leapfrog, said her group finds “mixed results” using the CMS data.

Patient safety advocate Helen Haskell says the results are “a long way” from the original goal of a 40% reduction in these “hospital-acquired conditions,” and she disagrees with some of the ways the conditions are measured and what’s included. Still, she thinks “these programs are the best thing we have going.”

Catheter infections dropped by about 15%, according to preliminary data from about 1,200 hospitals examined by CMS.

The new statistics represent progress and the collaboration on safety is a “huge improvement,” said Haskell. She founded Mothers Against Medical Errors after he son died in 2000 after a hospital error with his pain medication.

“I frankly shudder to think where we would be” without HHS’ health care quality agency and the partnership Burwell cited, she says. “It is sort of disgraceful that it has taken us this long.”