Crackdown begins on infections in hospitals

By Stephen Smith, Globe staff

State health regulators this morning approved a major crackdown designed to shield patients from catching potentially lethal infections while in the hospital.

The Public Health Council voted unanimously to begin sending state inspectors to hospitals to make sure facilities are following rules meant to reduce the spread of infections to patients. And the panel also approved creating a website that will post the infections rates at every hospital in Massachusetts, starting with the number of infections that happen after knee and hip surgeries.

Hospitals that fail to comply with the rules or that have an excessive number of infections could face the loss of their license, said Public Health Commissioner John Auerbach.

"We're going to take the regulations very seriously," Auerbach said in an interview. "Our expectation is the hospitals will be very cooperative. I don't think many of them are aware of the extent to which there are preventable mistakes that are being made."

A state report last summer found that potentially lethal infections contracted during hospital stays could be causing up to $473 million in medical costs annually in Massachusetts. National studies estimate that up to 90,000 patients a year die because of infections they catch while in hospitals or other medical facilities, with deadly germs gaining entry through surgical incisions and catheters and sometimes transmitted by doctors and nurses who fail to wash their hands.

After years of scant attention, infections have become central to the growing movement to improve patient care and to make the operations of hospitals more transparent.

Auerbach said the state expects to begin inspections and collecting data on infection rates within three to six months. It's less clear, he said, when the information will be posted on a website, in part because the Department of Public Health and another agency are considering combining quality data on a single site.