The Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania hailed a new report by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council that shows a significant decline in infections contracted during hospitalization.
The report, "Hospital-acquired Infections in Pennsylvania," compared calendar years 2006 and 2007 and documented a 7.8 percent decline in the infection rate per 1,000 cases.
"Hospitals across Pennsylvania have made major investments in their efforts to provide safe and high quality healthcare," said Carolyn F. Scanlan, HAP's president and CEO. "Clearly, these investments - in technology, infrastructure and workforce - are what it takes to continuously improve care for the millions of people who come to our hospitals each year."
The report also documented a year-to-year decline in mortality and mortality rate for cases with and without infections.
"These reports are valuable to patients and hospitals," Scanlan said. "Public release of information about infections helps patients and their families make choices about where to obtain care. The data also assists in evaluating the success of hospital prevention and control efforts as clinicians work to bring infection rates down to zero."
Scanlan cautioned that the gains of the past few years could be stalled if hospitals are unable to maintain or increase their critical investments in these endeavors.
"The current economic crisis imperils hospitals and the patients who depend on them," she said. "Even before the recent economic downturn, Pennsylvania hospitals faced the challenges of growing uncompensated care; rising labor, technology, and utility costs; ongoing high medical liability insurance costs; the cost of physician shortages; and Medicaid and Medicare underfunding."
Scanlan noted that, as more people lose jobs and health insurance, the financial burden on hospitals will increase. She also predicted that more patients would postpone preventive and routine healthcare and will be put at risk for more serious illnesses and complications before they seek care.
Scanlan warned policymakers that the failure to protect Pennsylvania's hospitals during the economic crisis would reduce the availability of healthcare and devastate the economies of Pennsylvania's communities.
"It is imperative that reimbursement from Medicaid and Medicare not be reduced any further and that critical funding that allows for significant, and effective, investments in infection prevention be preserved, even as government payers face their own financial squeeze in 2009," she said.
HAP is a statewide membership services organization that advocates for 250 Pennsylvania acute and specialty care, primary care, subacute care, long-term care, home health and hospice providers.