Hospital Acquired Obstetrical Infections

Leslie Iffy*

The December 2, 2015 issue of the “American Medical Association Morning  Rounds”   reminded  me  to  this  old  dictum.  It  announced that as a result of coordinated efforts by several national health care agencies, the rate of hospital acquired conditions diminished by 17% during the years of 2010 - 2014. With the exception of side effects of drugs, the “hospital acquired conditions” were invariably infections: “Urinary   tract   infection,   central   line   associated   blood   stream infection, pressure ulcer and surgical site infection”. It was calculated that  this  endeavor  saved  87,000  lives  and  $  20  billion  in  healthcare costs. My calculation is slightly different. In my mind this ambitious project failed to prevent almost 400,000 lives and allowed $100 billion taxpayers’  money  to  be  wasted.  The  pamphlet  cites  the  comment  of Dr. Richard Kromik, director of one the participating organizations. It seems to reveal that deep down in their souls the investigators felt  that something was missing from their announcement:  “We are still trying to understand all the factors involved.”

Keywords:

Published on: Dec 28, 2015 Pages: 17-21

Full Text PDF Full Text HTML DOI: 10.17352/jgro.000005
CrossMark Publons Harvard Library HOLLIS Search IT Semantic Scholar Get Citation Base Search Scilit OAI-PMH ResearchGate Academic Microsoft GrowKudos Universite de Paris UW Libraries SJSU King Library SJSU King Library NUS Library McGill DET KGL BIBLiOTEK JCU Discovery Universidad De Lima WorldCat VU on WorldCat