Columbia Study Discovers Most Hospitals Don’t Abide by Infection Prevention Rules

Columbia University recently conducted a study that is the most comprehensive review of infection control efforts in hospitals across the United States in over three decades. Researchers found that many hospitals fail to follow the appropriate protocol when it comes to the prevention of health care-associated infections.

The numbers suggest that health care-associated infections are a serious issue. They kill approximately 100,000 Americans each year and contribute to $33 billion in excess medical costs. The study shows that simply following protocol can drastically drop these startling statistics.

Patricia Stone, PhD, MPH, RN, FAAN, and her research team focused on three common preventable infections in 1,653 ICUs at 975 hospitals across the country. Their startling evidence may lead to further crackdowns in hospital safety procedures.

The common preventable infections focused on were central-line associated bloodstream infections, ventilator-associated pneumonia and catheter-associated urinary tract infections. The researchers found that not only did these hospitals fail to follow the proper prevention rules, but 10 percent lacked checklists to prevent bloodstream infections and 25 percent lacked checklists to help avoid pneumonia in ventilator patients. The study also found that these checklists are followed only about half of the time.

"Every hospital should see this research as a call to action--it's just unconscionable that we're not doing every single thing we can, every day, for every patient, to avoid preventable infections," said Stone in a EurekAlert! article.

Fortunately, Stone and her researchers have found two effective solutions to the problem. The first solution is providing more hospitals with electronic monitoring systems, which will provide report cards for clinicians in compliance with the prevention protocol. The second solution is certifying more staff in infection control. More than 33 percent of the hospitals in this study did not have a full-time employed clinician that was certified in the infection prevention protocol.

This is a cause for concern for various reasons. Many of the deaths and a majority of the medical costs can be prevented by simply having clinicians properly follow the evidence-based guidelines for the enumerated infections. The fact that the cleanliness in these hospitals is being compromised because employees are either untrained or unconcerned with conducting the proper procedures is reprehensible.

To read more about this Columbia University study, visit this EurekAlert! article.