| 11/22/2005 |
| Letters to the editor |
| Stop
rewarding poor performance Editor: Jeff Sonderman’s Nov. 17 article, “Taxpayers foot bill for infections,” underscores the willful failure of many hospitals to implement state-of-the-art hygiene and infection control procedures. This cavalier attitude toward patient safety dates back to 1847, when the medical community ignored Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis’ discovery that hand-washing by caregivers reduced women’s chances of getting puerperal fever during childbirth. Even after Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister confirmed the role of bacteria in causing diseases, hospitals dragged their feet in implementing basic hygiene and sterile operating rooms. The problem is that hospitals are rewarded financially for slipshod hygiene and poor infection control. If a patient gets a hospital-transmitted infection, the hospital bills the patient and/or his insurer for the extended stay along with physician and nursing fees. In no other industry is a supplier rewarded or even compensated for the consequences of poor performance. A very strong argument can be made for patients to protect themselves, at least financially, for being pre-tested for bacterial infections before going into a hospital for any nonemergency procedure. A negative pre-test for things like enterococcus, etreptococcus and staphylococcus could conceivably equip the patient to sue the hospital if he or she acquires one of these diseases, or to at least refuse to pay the hospital for the cost of treating it. Third-party insurers should consider requiring patients to be pretested for these diseases (at the insurer’s expense) so the hospital can be denied payment for the cost of treating them if they occur. This would be a very strong incentive for hospitals to implement and enforce stringent infection- control procedures. WILLIAM A. LEVINSON WILKES-BARRE |