Rates of Central Line Infections in Hospitals Continue to Be Troubling
The Indiana medical malpractice attorneys at our firm have been following the progress made in reducing the incidence of deadly central line infections or catheter-related blood stream infections in hospitals. We’ve blogged on the subject in the past, including success stories from hospitals around the country that have been able to reduce the incidences of these infections merely by following simple steps, like checklists.
However, at far too many hospitals in the country, preventing these infections continues to be a challenge. According to a new survey conducted by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC), these infections continue to be a major challenge in the facility where they work.
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There has been much focus on infection control in hospitals, but little has been done to cement the cracks at outpatient surgical centers, where infection rates continue to remain unacceptably high.
For long now, doctors have noticed that the number of medical errors is constant for all months of the year, except in July when there is a noticeable spike in 
As part of the Obama administration’s health care reform package, hospitals will be encouraged to shift from paper medical records to electronic records. So convinced is the administration about the efficacy of these electronic systems in preventing errors and reducing costs, that it has offered incentives to facilities that can speed up the process of shifting to electronic records. Unfortunately, the hurry to shift to an electronic system has been accompanied by poor staff training, computer glitches, and other factors that increase the risk of errors. 
The numbers of patients who contracted certain kinds of potentially deadly infections while in hospital, actually increased over last year. According to a 
Patients still struggle to determine a hospital’s safety based on its infection rates. However, things are slowly changing for the better. More and more hospitals are beginning to report their infection rates. Approximately, 1,500 hospitals report infection data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, these reports are strictly confidential. The Agency of Health Care Research and Quality also collects data from hospitals in 42 states, but these hospitals are not named. 
Every year, one particular type of medical infection kills approximately 30 percent of the estimated 99,000 people who died from hospital infections. 
New radiation technologies are offering patients more focused and precise treatment, but as a series of investigative reports in the New York Times shows, lack of safeguards, software flaws, faulty programming, poor safety procedures or inadequate staffing and training are causing these technologies to harm the very patients they are meant to treat. 
The H1N1 virus is a big concern for Indiana residents, as it is for the rest of the country. Many local schools, day cares and churches are taking extra precautions in the fight against the growing virus threat. 
