Hospital Acquired Infections Induce Injury Cases for Medical Malpractice Attorneys

Hospital Acquired Infections and the Associated Types

AIDS prompted widespread use of protective gear by hospital workers. They wore gloves, gowns and glasses. Now it’s patients who need to worry about getting sicker where they go to get well. MRSA, C. diff, and UTIs are the new acronyms to fear.

The numbers are nasty. A prominent study promoted by the Centers for Disease Control estimated that in one year, 722,000 patients contracted hospital-acquired infections (HAI). About 75,000 of those patients died during their hospitalizations, the CDC said.

Those numbers prompted the federal government to take action. Medicare cut reimbursements to hospitals with high rates of in-house infections, including 30 Georgia facilities.

Hospitals that fail to meet goals for lower infection rates face heavier financial penalties in coming years under the Affordable Care Act. Hospitals are settling medical malpractice lawsuits to avoid airing their hygiene missteps and failures to diagnose and treat infections soon enough.

Horror stories are abundant. A mysterious illness in a New Orleans pediatric hospital was traced to bed linens smeared with mucormycosis, a fungus that killed four children in a matter of months, according to the New York Times.

Harris Lowry Manton’s catastrophic injury attorneys represented a 72-year-old lady who went into Savannah’s Memorial University Medical Center for a colectomy and came out a paraplegic. Her epidural catheter site became infected. Due to alleged mismanagement of her infection and careless monitoring, she developed meningitis that paralyzed her. The case settled just before trial.

There are less dramatic but no less tragic cases involving IV, urinary tract and surgical site infections. Abrasions on patients with a weakened immune system are targets for opportunistic infections.

Catheter Associated Unitary Tract Infection (CAUTI)

Catheter-caused infections remain prevalent, and there’s been little improvement in combating them, the CDC says. Seventy-five percent of patients’ UTIs start in the hospital, according to the CDC. Epidural catheters also pose problems.

Clostridium Difficile (C. Diff)

The antibiotics that kill the catheter-site infections attack germs broadly, meaning “good bacteria” is killed also. That leaves the patient more at risk for another infection, C. diff, or Clostridium difficile. C. diff causes severe diarrhea and can lead to death. The infection is at historically high rates and is associated with 14,000 deaths per year, according to the CDC.

MRSA

MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, attacks patients at broken skin and puncture sites. It is chiefly contracted in hospitals and has advanced from a “controllable nuisance” to a “serious public healthcare concern,” according to the National Institutes of Health. Most people have the staph germ on their skin or in their noses. For people without compromised immune systems, a strong antibiotic should stop the infection. Intravenous dosing of Vancomycin is known to stop MRSA, according to the NIH.

The simplest advice healthcare experts give about stemming the spread of HAIs is to wash hands thoroughly and often. It’s the best aid to researchers who continue to chase new cures for superbug bacterium that adapt, mutate and stay a step ahead of treatment.

The toughest medicine might be this: health officials are putting responsibility on patients to challenge their doctors or anyone else they think hasn’t properly scrubbed up.

For more about health-care associated infections, please see:

• The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s HAI Data and Statistics.
• The CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report featuring the CDC National Health Report: Leading Causes of Morbidity and Mortality and Associated Behavioral Risk and Protective Factors—United States, 2005-2013.
• The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ research, history and overview on MRSA.

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