Worthington Law Group
Injury Law Report

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC), patients in American hospitals come down with over 2 million hospital acquired infections each year, 90,000 of which result in death. Nursing home patients are not immune either: The CDC estimates that this population suffers another 1.5 million preventable infections each year, for an annual total total of 3.5 million facility acquired infections. These numbers are grim enough on their own. They become even worse when you realize that, by comparison, the incidence of new AIDS infections ranges from 38,000 to 56,000 per year. AIDS deaths number approximately 16,000 per year. Considering the lack of news coverage regarding the number of deaths caused by infections, you could consider it a silent epidemic.

The number of such infections has risen in recent years, although experts disagree about the reasons. Some point to the rise in the number of infectious agents that are resistant to some or all of the antibiotics used to treat infections. Others point to the increasing prevalence of HMOs. This can result in patients’ not being treated by specialists trained to recognize an infection until after it has become established and is more difficult to treat. Others claim that the infection rate has never changed, that reporting is now more accurate.

Many authorities reject hospitals’ traditional response to complaints about infections acquired in their facilities. The concept that a certain number of infections is inevitable. These authorities now conclude that most of these infections result from the failure of the hospital or its staff to strictly follow infection prevention rules.

Revolutions

The response to this information has led to a legal revolution that will hopefully bring about a health care revolution. More than 50% of all states have passed laws requiring hospital acquired infections to be reported to state health authorities. This will give people a better idea of the scope of the problem. The CDC itself now gives the issue much more attention than it ever did in the past. It has recently issued guidelines that hospitals and nursing homes should follow to prevent patient infections. The Joint Commission, a body that gives hospitals their accreditation, has also issued infection guidelines. Their regulations are considered by many to be a good statement of the standards that hospitals should follow.

These changes are regulatory and legal. Lawyers who counsel hospitals and nursing homes take these standards seriously. They advise their clients to enact protocols to ensure that these standards are met. This can comprise rules that can include something as simple as requiring the staff to wash or otherwise disinfect their hands when moving from one patient to another.

Lawyers also advise hospitals to regularly screen patients for the presence of drug resistant organisms. They further advise regular use of instruments that have been pretreated with antibiotics to prevent infections before they occur. In recent years many facilities have overhauled their policies and procedures based on these recommendations intended to prevent infections. They have even imposing penalties on doctors and staff who fail to obey the new, stricter rules.

Lawsuits

However, because not all hospitals and nursing homes have gotten the message, and because some of them allow profits to come before patient care, a different legal avenue is being pursued: litigation. The problem of hospital acquired infections is now well known. With the enactment of many new regulations designed to address the issue, hospitals find it harder to avoid liability when a patient does become infected.

In some rare cases, juries are awarding tens of millions of dollars to patients who contracted serious bacterial infections while they were patients at hospitals or nursing homes. These are infections that often involve drug resistant, flesh eating bacteria that lead to death or to the loss of limbs and organs. Most experts agree that the publicity given to the problem has also increased juror awareness of the problem, and less tolerant of a hospital’s lack of a similar awareness and concern.

Despite increased awareness, lawsuits regarding facility acquired infections can be difficult to win. Although the fact of the infection is known, the cause is often difficult to pinpoint. In some cases, the medical records allow experts to determine the likely cause or source of the infection. In other cases it is not possible to know exactly where the infection came from and, therefore, who is at fault. This uncertainty means hospital infection cases must be handled very carefully by experienced lawyers. This will ensure that the injured patient or his or her surviving family have their day in court.

If you feel that you or someone you love may have been a victim of a preventable infection, contact us. We can help you determine the best course of action under the circumstances.