But not every hospital lives up to the highest standards. In fact, some are downright death traps, filled with unsafe practices, careless staff and unsanitary conditions. In an influential 2010 report, the United States Department of Health and Human Services reported that 180,000 patients a year die from infections, surgical mistakes and other medical harm experienced while staying in a hospital.
That’s only counting Medicare patients, by the way. As for the others, well, no one knows about them, because there are no quantifiable reports aggregated about national hospital errors, omissions and fatalities. Most incidents are quietly swept under the rug, of concern only to the immediate families of those unfortunate enough to have experienced a poor standard of care.
In fact, Rosemary Gibson, an author and patient safety advocate, notes that more than 2 million people will die from some form medical harm in this decade. While not all of these incidents occurred in hospitals, it’s a safe bet that a large percentage of them were in the confines of a medical facility.
You Have a Choice
Fortunately, unless you’re an emergency patient, you have a choice in which hospital you’ll attend. There are any number of ratings services, ranging from the formal evaluations of state medical boards to those created by commercial publications like Consumer Reports and U.S. News. There are even online services like Yelp that will tell you about how you can expect to be treated during your hospital stay based on prior patient experiences.
Consumer Reports, a long-time independent product and services standards advocate, rates hospitals for safety based on the most current data available. Unfortunately, not every hospital is covered, and the Consumer Reports service cites the same sketchy lack of information on its inability to reach more than 18 percent of the nation’s hospitals for evaluation.
Still, the service annually rates more than 1,100 facilities, providing a way to comparison shop within the relative confines of your needs and location.
Six Categories of Care
The Consumer Reports hospital findings focused on six categories: readmissions, infections, communication, complications, CT scanning and mortality. They also interviewed patients, physicians, safety experts and hospital administration to provide an overview of some of the more common occurrences in a hospital.
What they discovered is somewhat disturbing. All hospitals have some safety issues, Consumer Reports discovered, but bad hospitals have a lot of them. Even hospitals at the top of the list scored just 72 on a 100-point scale of safety, and some of the nation’s big names in hospitals – Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and the Cleveland Clinic, scored less than 50 on the safety scale.
Consumer Reports also mentioned that one in 20 hospitalized people will develop an infection, many of which can lead to life-threatening issues. These are usually caused by improperly sterilized needles and catheters, contaminated doctors, nurses or other workers, and dirty instruments or conditions.
Worse, about 290,000 surgical-site infections happen each year. These are particularly deadly, killing more than 16,000 patients per year. The sad news is that most of them are preventable, and of the 1,100 hospitals surveyed by Consumer Reports, fewer than 150 reported zero infections.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
Beyond reading everything you can about the hospital where you’re going to stay, ask a lot of questions of the administrators or admitting doctors to find out if the hospital is following best practices. Ask your friends and family if they know anyone who has ever stayed in the hospital, and ask those people how they were treated and if they were satisfied that they received an excellent standard of care.
You also can take precautions once you are admitted. Make sure that all staffers and visitors touching you have thoroughly cleaned their hands, and ask at least daily if you can have tubes or catheters, common sites of infection, removed. If you’re going into surgery, let your doctor know about any pre-existing conditions that may complicate surgery, like diabetes, and whether you’ll be shaved in any particular area (shaving can nick you, allowing bacteria to enter).
If you are being treated for heartburn, you may receive drugs called proton pump inhibitors. These carry a risk of causing pneumonia and intestinal infections. Question their use and ask when you can stop taking them.
Before leaving the hospital, make sure you thoroughly understand your medicine schedules and how to treat any surgical wounds. Get the directions in writing and make sure there’s a contact number available. This may come in handy if you develop an infection after leaving the hospital.
While all of that may be grim news, there is a ray of light. Hospitals are increasingly aware that they are under greater scrutiny, thanks to the examinations by publications and websites, and are working harder to correct lax practices and shore up their safety reputations. There is also some funding targeting hospital safety available from federal and state governments, and electronic record-keeping is bringing previously hidden malpractice and safety issues out of the darkness and into the light.
Still, your first line of defense is general awareness about what could go wrong during your hospital stay. Awareness of potential problems, attention to details on your care and treatment, and a watchful attitude by your family and friends during your stay will help maintain your safety under trying conditions. Know that most hospitals are careless more than malicious. Just a little bit of extra attention will go a long way to ensuring that your hospital stay will leave you in better condition than when you entered.