A recent article published in the Seattle Times details how Seattle-area hospitals fared in recent a Consumer Reports analysis of a hospital’s ability to prevent patients from acquiring infections.

Unfortunately, for many high profile hospitals in the area, the results were not good. You can read the Seattle Times article here:

[Consumer Reports: Seattle-area hospitals get low marks for stopping infections](http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/seattle-area-hospitals-get-low-marks-for-stopping-infections/)

Almost 650,000 people in the US every year acquire infections from hospital stays, and about 75,000 people die. This includes infections like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Clostridium dificile (C. diff.).

Hospital administrators for many of the hospitals are quoted in the article, and are quick to point out that this is one measure of a hospital’s ability to provide safe care for their patients. Further, this data is two years old, and it is the hope and belief of these hospitals that since that time, efforts to reduce rates of infection have improved patient safety.

But the data as it is presented in this article does not look good for a number of prominent hospitals. Some highlights:

– Swedish Medical Center’s Cherry Hill campus received the lowest rating for avoiding infections overall, and the second worst rating for stopping MRSA and C. Diff infections. Its rate of catheter-associated urinary-tract infections in the ICU was 290% worse than baseline rates nationally.
– The University of Washington Medical Center received a middle rating for avoiding infections overall, but a second worst rating for avoiding MRSA and the worst rating for avoiding surgical-site infections.
– St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma had a MRSA rate that was 186% worse than the national baseline.

Unfortunately, modern medicine has not solved the problem of hospital-acquired infections. As a result, it is very difficult to bring a lawsuit against a hospital when such an infection occurs. The problem often is isolating a particular act or omission by a health care provider or team of providers that caused the infection. That is almost impossible to do. Certainly, cases can be made involving the delay in diagnosing and/or treating such an infection, but it’s difficult to find negligence in allowing the infection to occur in the first place.

One exception is for an infection that occurs from a particular bacteria or fungi that is so rare, that the fact that the infection occurred leads one to conclude that certain policies or procedures must not have been followed to allow for the infection to occur. Absent that, the standard of care for hospitals continues to allow for infections to occur, and patients to die from them.