February 28th, 2011

The Pottsville Republican reports:

The sick go to hospitals to get better, but some leave with a new problem: health care-associated infections.

“It can triple their recovery time or they could end up dying from those infections,” Lillian Klitsch, chief nursing officer at Saint Catherine Medical Center Fountain Springs, Ashland, said Thursday.

A report published Friday by The Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council shows that 1.2 percent of patients admitted to state hospitals in 2009 got an infection while there. About 1.9 million patients were admitted, with 23,287 contracting surgical site, urinary tract or other infections.

Read the full story: Hospitals take infection danger seriously