With the 'never events' going into effect....this is needed: http://www.modernhealthcare.com/apps...9995&nocache=1

Truth, like beauty, seems to be in the eye of the beholder when it comes to healthcare and medical errors. There are many angry patients in the U.S.—if the Web site Americans Mad and Angry is any indication—who think providers are deliberately indifferent to their health. Just as there are many doctors who feel they are doing the best they can in an environment hostile to their practice, and many hospitals that believe they are being called upon to work miracles while faced with rapidly diminishing resources.


Infections play a big role in medical errors and in the perception that the healthcare industry is doing something—or doing little—to stop errors. At some point, everyone has to stop passing the buck and work together to approach the truth and to make healthcare better, quality advocates say.

Stephen Weber, a physician who is medical director of infection control at the 594-bed University of Chicago Medical Center, called it reclaiming leadership. “Our credibility has waned outside of our profession,” says Weber, speaking last week at the Joint Commission’s Annual Infection and Prevention Control Conference in Chicago.

Weber, a Joint Commission consultant, says providers should acknowledge the truth in the patients’ perspective of infection control. “We can talk about all the great campaigns we’ve had in our facilities, but we need to acknowledge we’re not at zero,” he says. After that, all the stakeholders need to collaborate, he adds.
Infection control is the name of the game for the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, which hosted Mastering the New CMS Regulation: Implications for Infection Prevention and Control in Washington this week to help practitioners understand changes coming to the CMS’ reimbursement policy. More than 300 doctors, nurses, infection control specialists and other healthcare leaders came to listen to strategies for meeting quality measures as required by Medicare under the latest inpatient prospective payment system and its new nonpayment policy for certain hospital-acquired conditions, which begins Oct. 1. Three of those hospital-acquired infections include: catheter-associated urinary-tract infections; catheter-associated bloodstream infections; and ventilator-assisted pneumonia.


The presence of those three HAIs on the list of conditions that will no longer be paid has hospitals eyeing their infection control programs, says Tammy Lundstrom, a physician and chief medical officer for 453-bed Providence Hospital and Medical Center, Southfield, Mich. While providers are still unsure if those infections are completely preventable, the focus on them “galvanizes everyone in the facility to work in the same direction. Infection control is a team sport,” she says.

Lundstrom mentioned the Americans Mad and Angry site as an example of what providers are facing in the public sector. There is a perception that if anything happens during patient care, “something was done wrong,” she says. The patient-advocacy group—which calls itself “the other AMA” on the Web site—says its mission is to foster awareness of medical errors and push for transparency in the industry.

But the infection control team includes patients, Lundstrom says. Families and patients can participate in hand hygiene—a critical element in reducing infections—by reminding providers to wash their hands when they enter the room, Lundstrom says. But she acknowledged that even as a healthcare worker, she struggled with speaking up when her son was staying in the hospital.
After a snowboarding trip left her son with a ruptured spleen, Lundstrom finally landed on a working solution to make sure people used the hand gel stationed next to the door. She sat, legs crossed like a gate by the door and pointed to the hand gel whenever someone tried to come in. It was an effective, if subtle, message. “One hundred percent of people who touched my child washed their hands or the gate was not lowered,” she told an appreciative audience that broke into applause.


It’s not just about trying to make patients more involved in care: A change of perception will help providers, as well. Understanding what causes infections in hospitals will help facilities deal with the new CMS regulations, according to Sanjay Saint, a physician and a professor of medicine at the University of Michigan Health System and Ann Arbor VA Medical Center.

Saint spoke during the APIC conference about methods to reduce urinary-tract infections, one of the more serious conditions a patient could acquire from prolonged use of a catheter. One of the issues is that the coding hospitals have to use to record the infection is unclear in the new CMS regulation and will require more communication among staff, he says. “I realize this rule change will create bonding between physicians and coders.”
But a better flow of information across hospital departments will lead to improved understanding of urinary-tract infections—an issue that, like Rodney Dangerfield, has had “no respect” in healthcare until now, Saint says. Because the CMS is spotlighting it, “people will now focus on it,” he says.