Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
Stumble
Sunday, Aug. 8, 2010 | 2 a.m.
Today’s stories by Sun reporters Marshall Allen and Alex Richards about patients who have become infected by lethal, drug-resistant bacteria during stays in Las Vegas Valley hospitals should serve as a wake-up call to those medical facilities that more needs to be done to improve patient safety. The rate of patients who contracted the contagious bacteria known in shorthand as MRSA rose by 34 percent in area hospitals from 2008 to 2009.
State records available before 2008 do not indicate whether patients were infected in the hospital or had the infection when they were admitted. But the records show that 2,010 patients were infected with MRSA and Clostridium difficile, better known as C. diff, while hospitalized during the two-year period for which records are available, providing enough evidence to indicate a widespread problem that warrants immediate attention.
As Nevada State Epidemiologist Dr. Ihsan Azzam told the Sun: “Such a significant increase in these rates coupled with the threat of emerging resistant organisms in the health care setting should sound the alarm for all clinicians, hospitals, infection-control specialists and epidemiologists.”
One patient, 74-year-old Darwyn Lepper, died of infections months after undergoing hip surgery in 2008 at a local hospital. Why was that allowed to happen?
The possible answers are unsettling. Registered nurse Christina Schofield said she has witnessed poor infection-control practices everywhere she worked in Las Vegas over the past 23 years. Among the most egregious of these practices are when patients with contagious infections are placed in rooms with uninfected patients, rooms are not adequately cleaned between patient stays and medical professionals fail to wash their hands. Schofield called it “a multisystem failure.”
There is no excuse for such shoddy practices. Patients have every reason to expect that when they visit a hospital, it will be clean and safe.
Although the hospitals did not dispute the Sun’s findings, University Medical Center, to its credit, was the only area hospital willing to discuss them. Dr. Alan Greenberg, medical director of UMC’s infectious disease program, said the failure to follow hand-washing rules is a consistent problem.
The other hospitals, speaking only through their trade group, the Nevada Hospital Association, said they adhere to national standards intended to prevent the spread of bacteria among patients. This is troubling because it tells us either that the national standards are deficient or that hospitals have not been as careful as they say they have been at trying to stop the spread of infections acquired in their facilities.
If the problem lies with the national standards, the appropriate medical associations should make the necessary revisions so hospitals are employing the best known practices to prevent infections. Otherwise, the onus is on hospitals to take corrective action.
It is worth mentioning that some hospitals, including those run by the Veterans Affairs Department, have zero-tolerance policies for the spread of infections in their facilities. This is the right policy that should be followed by all hospitals in this country.
No miracle drug can wipe out MRSA or C. diff the way that penicillin was once used to defeat the deadly Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. MRSA and C. diff are more drug-resistant, which is why their presence has reached epidemic proportions. Hospital-acquired infections cost $30 billion annually and lead to the deaths of an estimated 100,000 people a year, making them among the nation’s leading causes of death.
Given those statistics, it is perplexing that no health agency tracks these cases. It is equally disturbing that Las Vegas Valley hospitals were successful last year in killing proposed state legislation that would have required them to publicly report the incidence of MRSA in their facilities.
Because area hospitals have struggled to keep Southern Nevadans from seeking medical care out of state, one would think they would be doing everything possible to build public trust in their facilities.
There is an easy solution RIGHT NOW. The problem is most hospitals are more interested in there bottom line rather than a patients life. The Medizone company makes a product that makes an operating room or a patients room 99.9999% sterile. it can even kill anthrax spores and is used by the government in its bioterrorism battle. The object of the hospitals is to make money first. Patient health is secondary.
It seems the cure is already here. Scientists have found a new antibiotic to cure MRSA.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/articl...
Try garlic.
That is what I respect most about you, Mr. Sun...you are always willing to go out on a limb with your opinions...
Profit over safety. It's the same song and dance that has plagued businesses regardless of its purpose. The recent Gulf Oil spill serves as monument to what happens when profits are placed first, and safety disregarded. Millions are spent back-pedaling, when a few dollars upfront would have been a wise investment.
Obviously Nevada hospitals haven't learned the lesson. The hospitals would rather spend hundreds of thousands of dollars battling lawsuits, trying to defend their downfall and bad reputations, before spending a few thousand dollars to ensure patient safety, and better patient outcomes.
Healthcare administrators know from evidenced based practice, that alcohol on the hands will not kill C. Diff. Given the fact that the Emergency Departments are overwhelmed, under-staff and poorly managed, the stage is set for the continued downward healthcare spiral.
The few hand-santizers sprinkled throughout the hospital lobbies and patient care area fall short of providing needed protection, and yet they give patients a false sense of safety; that "all is right with the world", when in fact hospital administrators could care less. Its all about money. Bottom line.
I have been a visitor in two of the hospitals named in your article on Sunday, August 8. I had the displeasure of seeing the lack of sinks available for hand washing after the doctors and/or nurses finished patient care. I also found it alarming that when I tired to sanitize my hands before leaving the emergency department the sanitizer container was empty. So much for "protection".
The autoclaves that sterilze the equipment also needs to checked out on a regular basis as they too break down and get overlooked and then resealed.
In '91 I was working construction at Sunrise Hospital. They were remodeling one of their existing floors which house the sick who had to stay overnight or more. I was on that floor in the Hospital as they were tearing out the walls and the ceilings.
After 4 days the company transferred me to another job.
The next day, I couldn't even get out of bed I was so sick. you figure I was inhaleing just about every disease and virus that was brought in by every patient before the tearout started.
Today it is not just the walls and floors and whatever is in the room, but the heating and air ducts that are contaminated.
These facilties better find a way to shut a floor down and sanitize each room along with the heating and air ducts before they get tied up in multi-million dollar lawsuits. To sanitize each floor in the long run will be cheaper than paying on lawsuits and will reflect that the hospitals are aware of the problem and are doing something to correct it.
These facilities should have tests done periodically on each floor and in individual rooms to determine if they are doing a proper job of sanitizing. Their scores on sanitizing of their facility should be printed in the RJ or Sun. If they are found to be not complying with sanitizing their facility, they should be fined and forced to close down areas that aren't sanitized and clean them.
By now if the owners can't do a proper job of keeping their hospitals sanitized, I guess the state should be monitoring them.
Killed my Dad, MRSA is a nationwide issue and the lawyers will call as soon as the patient passes. Brevard County Florida is just as bad, My Dad had a out patient cataract procedure done and was dead in two weeks. Hospital staff was furious with the admin staff as they screwed up the testing when he was first admitted, precautions were not posted(gown/gloves) for three days(treatment either)! Then I was informed that there were 17 "new cases" at three area hospitals, wonder how the lawyers found out? If you intend a law suit keep in mind you will need to arrange to have an autopsy done, and in the end the lawyers/investigators/clerks/doctor expert witness scammers end up with the bulk of any settlement.
I went into labor on Saturday July 28, 2001 and arrived to Mountain view hospital. The nurse told me that baby was definitely going to be born that day. However my obstetrician didn't answer the phone for three hours and she gave me terbutaline sulfate to stop the labor. My baby was born two days later. So they don't even have obstetricians on call! The worst delivery was in Summerlin Hospital Jan.15 2005 when I delivered a baby two months premature (due to homelessness caused by moldy Pulte Homes house). In NICU my baby received therapy for bilirubin, but they forgot to protect his eyes. My pumped mild systematically disappeared without a trace and anyway the doctor said constantly, he's drank enough. Then after five days, when drinking mostly sugar water, instead of my milk, they noticed my baby's dramatic weight loss. Worst of all was nurses chatting instead of working, discouraging breastfeeding over formula and dropping my baby. On his fifth day in NICU I found my baby black and blue. The nurse lied to me that all babies who are born "normally" get black and blue after birth, but those were fresh bruises. Hospital beds are primitive, Vegas hospitals lack of trained staff and babies sleep on damp towels instead of mattresses. No wonder U.S.A.'s is child mortality rate is higher than in war torn Slovenia!