Perhaps hospitals should post signs warning patients that they’re at risk of dying – from ailments they pick up while they’re being treated at those health-care facilities. Or so a new study says.
About 48,000 patients a year die from ailments – from pneumonia to blood poisoning – that they contract while hospitalized, according to a study by the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy at Resources for the Future, a Washington think tank.
http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2010/02/23/2010-02-23_hospital_infections_killed_nearly_50000_in_a_year_says_a_new_study.html
The cases of patients getting an illness while hospitalized lead to 2.3 million extra patient days in hospitals, costing $8.1 billion in 2006, the study found.
Sepsis, a blood infection, killed 20 percent of the patients who got it after surgery, according to the study. Patients who contracted sepsis after surgery stayed hospitalized on average 10 days more, costing $32,900 per patient.
As one doctor lamented, a basically healthy person can come to a hospital for routine surgery, but then develop sepsis because of sloppy infection control and die.
Pneumonia was another deadly disease contracted by hospital patients. Those who got pneumonia had to stay an extra two weeks at the hospital, for an additional cost of $46,400. Over 11 percent of those who contracted pneumonia died, the study found.
Simple measures such as better hygiene, like mere handwashing, and screening patients as they check in can help decrease the number ailments that patients get while hospitalized. But enforcing those actions is difficult.
Search abandoned for NJ baby’s body, lost in trash
Date: 1/8/2009
JERSEY CITY, N.J. (AP) — Police who searched dumps in three states for the remains of a baby thrown out in a Jersey City hospital’s trash gave up Thursday, saying they had little chance of success.
“We have come to the harsh reality that efforts to locate the remains of Bashere Davon Moyd Jr. would be a Herculean undertaking with little probability of a successful conclusion,” Jersey City police Chief Thomas Comey said in a statement posted on the department’s Web site.
Authorities had been looking for the baby’s body since Jan. 2, when it was discovered missing from the morgue at Christ Hospital. The remains apparently were thrown away with the hospital’s trash sometime between Dec. 21 and Jan. 2, police said.
They searched dumps in New Jersey and Pennsylvania before focusing on a landfill in Ashland, Ky., where the waste may have been transferred. On Wednesday, Comey said he feared the waste was sent elsewhere and may have been incinerated.
Hospital officials and police have declined to say exactly how the baby ended up in the trash.
“The investigation failed to uncover any evidence of criminal conduct, but rather indicated this unfortunate incident was the result of procedural deficiencies and human error,” Comey said.
The baby was delivered Dec. 21. Hospital officials say it was stillborn, but the mother, 26-year-old Kalynn Moore, said her son was born alive with a weak heartbeat and died about 20 minutes later as doctors tried to save him.
Whether the child was stillborn is an important legal distinction because New Jersey law does not recognize stillborn babies as human.
Moore’s lawyer, Michael Anise, has said that a lawsuit is likely. He maintains there is no reason for the body of a fetus to have been thrown into the trash.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
JERSEY CITY, N.J. (AP) — Police who searched dumps in three states for the remains of a baby thrown out in a Jersey City hospital’s trash gave up Thursday, saying they had little chance of success.
“We have come to the harsh reality that efforts to locate the remains of Bashere Davon Moyd Jr. would be a Herculean undertaking with little probability of a successful conclusion,” Jersey City police Chief Thomas Comey said in a statement posted on the department’s Web site.
Authorities had been looking for the baby’s body since Jan. 2, when it was discovered missing from the morgue at Christ Hospital. The remains apparently were thrown away with the hospital’s trash sometime between Dec. 21 and Jan. 2, police said.
They searched dumps in New Jersey and Pennsylvania before focusing on a landfill in Ashland, Ky., where the waste may have been transferred. On Wednesday, Comey said he feared the waste was sent elsewhere and may have been incinerated.
Hospital officials and police have declined to say exactly how the baby ended up in the trash.
“The investigation failed to uncover any evidence of criminal conduct, but rather indicated this unfortunate incident was the result of procedural deficiencies and human error,” Comey said.
The baby was delivered Dec. 21. Hospital officials say it was stillborn, but the mother, 26-year-old Kalynn Moore, said her son was born alive with a weak heartbeat and died about 20 minutes later as doctors tried to save him.
Whether the child was stillborn is an important legal distinction because New Jersey law does not recognize stillborn babies as human.
Moore’s lawyer, Michael Anise, has said that a lawsuit is likely. He maintains there is no reason for the body of a fetus to have been thrown into the trash.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
