Connecticut Hospitals Punished For Infections and Injuries

Uh-Oh. Please keep those gloves on, because if I'm in your hospital, I don't need to be any sicker.

Usually, I'd say that no good can come from a story like this, but in this instance, hopefully change will come -- that would be excellent.

In a scary report from the New Haven Register, almost half of Connecticut's hospitals are being punished for having too many patients get infections and injuries while hospitalized --Yikes!

According to the story, the Connecticut hospitals are among 769 nationwide that will lose one percent of their Medicare reimbursements this year as part of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services initiative known as the, Hospital-Acquired Condition Reduction Program. 

The program, now in it's third year, penalizes the lowest-performing hospitals where a relatively high number of patients got infections from hysterectomies, colon surgeries, urinary tract catheters and central line tubes. It also takes into account patients who suffered from blood clots, bed sores or falls while hospitalized. This year, they added a new component that factors in the incidents, in which antibiotic-resistant bacteria — namely, methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, and Clostridium difficile (C. diff) -- spread.

Some of the biggies making the list are Yale-New Haven, Hartford Hospital, Bridgeport Hospital, John Dempsey Hospital in Farmington, and St. Francis Hospital & Medical Center in Hartford, but smaller hospitals are on the list as well, as reported by nhregister.com

Lisa Freeman, executive director for Connecticut Center for Patient Safety told the New Haven Register:

As long as any patients are getting hospital-acquired infections and conditions, there needs to be improvement. The good news that comes out of this is that when hospitals focus on fixing a particular problem, they come up with solutions

Let's do better, people.

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