- In this report
- Overview
- March 2010 Ratings
- Central lines
- The checklist revolution
- Freeing the data
- Does reporting help?
- This checklist might save your life
- What you can do
What you can do
This article appeared in Until all hospitals are doing as well as the top performers do now, patients and their families can't assume that all necessary steps are being taken to guard against infection. Here's how to protect yourself:
- Look online to find out whether your hospital makes its infection rate public. See the box below.
If you have a choice of hospitals, this information can help you find one that practices good infection–control measures. If you don't have a choice, you can see where your hospital stands. If it's not good, prepare yourself to be aggressive in monitoring infection–control practices.
Patients, friends, and family members should insist that caregivers:
- Wash their hands with soap or an alcohol–based solution before touching a patient. They should also don sterile gloves before touching any catheters and check to see that dressings are in place.
- Follow the Pronovost checklist in cases where a central line is needed. (See A Life-saving Checklist.)
- Remove devices that enter the body, including central lines and urinary catheters, as soon as no longer needed.
Online resources
At www.ConsumerReportsHealth.org/hospitalinfections, check to see whether your state publishes hospital infection reports. Links to free state reporting sites are available there. (Some state reports are not user–friendly, something we'd like to see changed as soon as possible.) Additional information on state infection reporting and infection prevention is available at Consumers Union's Safe Patient Project, at www.SafePatientProject.org/topics.html.
Subscribers to our health Web site, at www.ConsumerReportsHealth.org, can compare more than 3,600 hospitals on a range of characteristics, including bloodstream–infection data where available.
Central–line–associated bloodstream–infection rates and other data derived from hospitals' voluntary submissions to the Leapfrog Hospital Survey are also available at www.leapfroggroup.org.
