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page was printed from the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO Web site at www.paaflcio.org.
For more information about the information in this document contact:New Legislation Would Require Hospitals to Take Action on Hospital-Acquired Infections
State Rep. Tony DeLuca has introduced legislation designed to encourage hospitals to take more action to prevent the spread of hospital-acquired infections to patients. Approximately 103,000 Americans die each year from hospital-acquired infections.
PA AFL-CIO President William M. George spoke out in support of Rep. DeLuca’s legislation stating, “We need to stand together and take this necessary step in controlling health care costs. Rep. DeLuca’s bill will benefit everyone concerned, the insurance companies, the hospitals, the insured, and most importantly the patients.”
Patients without infections have an average hospital stay of 5 days costing $32,048 whereas patients with infections have an average stay of 31 days costing $353,000.
Rep. Mundy, a supporter of theDeLuca bill, said the healthcare system “is the only system in our society where we are rewarding people for making more mistakes.”
Rep. DeLuca agrees noting that “hospitals are benefiting financially from a lack of infection prevention while the financial toll is impacting everyone through the cost of hospital treatment and the cost of health insurance coverage.”
Under the proposed legislation, each incident of hospital-acquired infection would have to be reported to the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council. A hospital would have to publicly post the number of cases of hospital-acquired infections within their facility. The information could be be utilized in a variety of ways. Reports would assist in determining exactly how much money hospital-acquired infections are costing Pennsylvanians each year. Currently there is no way to gauge this information. Employers and Unions who pay the bills for medical care would be able to use the report information to reward the hospitals that are doing a good job by higher payments.
A number of Pennsylvania of labor-union representatives serve on the board of the PA Health Care Containment Council.
Health Care In Pennsylvania
In 2003, the last for which data are available, 1.38 million Pennsylvanians did not have health care insurance.
Between 1999 and 2003, the number of Pennsylvanians without health insurance grew by 40 percent rising from 989,000 to 1.38 million.
The percentage of Pennsylvanians covered employer-based health fell fell by 5% between 2000 and 2003.
(Source: KRC State of Working Pennsylvania 2004)
Read about the impact of Medical Assistance on the most recent state budget on IssuesPA.
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