Health Care Issues: Hospital-Associated Infection Control

Thanks to the recent midterm elections and this week’s State of the Union address, health care and health care reform has made its way into the headlines more often over the past few months. But one topic we haven’t seen covered very often is the frequency of health care-associated infections (or HAIs), which are any infection that patients develop at a hospital or other patient care facility that they didn’t have prior to treatment, like ventilator-related pneumonia and surgery site infections. We were shocked to learn that HAIs are one of the top ten causes of death in the U.S., with an estimated two million patients being affected by an HAI every year.

But one company, Kimberly-Clark Health Care, which manufactures tubes and other sterile products used in hospitals, is working to raise awareness of HAIs and increase prevention through its Not On My Watch Campaign, which offers continuing education to health care facilities’ staff and management.

Will it help reduce the number of HAIs in the U.S.? That remains to be seen. But HAIs are one of the scariest things we can imagine — just think: You go into the hospital to be treated for something, trusting that your doctors will give you the best possible care, and you end up with an unrelated infection that could make you even more ill. Going to the hospital is scary enough on its own, without worrying about contracting an infection while you’re a patient. So, hell yes, we want our health care providers educated about HAIs and how to prevent them, so that we never have to confront one ourselves.

Have you or anyone you know ever contracted an HAI? Do you think this new campaign will help prevent them?

You can learn more about scary HAIs here.