The Need for Clean Hospitals. Our Unsanitary Hospitals - WSJ.com

That's "Clean", not a typo of "Lean." Good column in the WSJ today by Betsy McCaughey, head of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths organization (link).

She asks why restaurants and meat packing plants get inspected more than our nation's operating rooms.

"Restaurants in New York are inspected, without prior notice, once a year. In Los Angeles, inspections are done three times a year, and restaurants must display their grade near the front door. After L.A. instituted this inspection system in 1998, the number of people sickened by food-borne illnesses fell 13%, according to the Journal of Environmental Health. Other cities are now following L.A.'s lead.

Why aren't hospitals held to the same rigorous standard? The consequences of inadequate hygiene are far deadlier in hospitals than in restaurants. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 2,500 people die each year after picking up a food-borne illness in a restaurant or prepared food store. Forty times that number -- 100,000 people -- die each year, according to the CDC, from infections contracted in health-care facilities."

What leads to infections? Some of it is a classic Lean "standardized work" issue:

These infections are caused largely by unclean hands, inadequately cleaned equipment and contaminated clothing that allow bacteria to spread from patient to patient. In a study released in April, Boston University researchers examining 49 operating rooms at four New England hospitals found that more than half the objects that should have been disinfected were overlooked by cleaners.

Why is this? Lack of training? Lack of clear standardized work? Lack of time to do their job properly?

"Hospitals used to routinely test surfaces for bacteria, but in 1970 the CDC and the American Hospital Association advised them to stop, saying testing was unnecessary. The CDC still adheres to that position despite a 32-fold increase in MRSA infections. CDC officials say that lab capacity should be reserved for tests on patients.

Testing surfaces is so simple and inexpensive that it's used routinely in the food industry. Is it more important to test for bacteria in meat processing plants than in operating rooms?"

If we have lab capacity issues (that testing is done in a hospital lab), there is another opportunity for Lean, to improve flow and to free up capacity. The healthcare industry has smart people and the tools to fix all of these problems, we just need the leadership and the attention to be paid to these issues. The public needs to start standing up and demanding better.

It's not just hospitals, either, it's doctor's offices, which get no inspection at all. McCaughey tells a story of a physician who was REUSING NEEDLES (yes, you read that right) with patients. Who in their right mind does that?

The New York State Department of Health called Dr. Finkelstein's reuse of syringes
a "correctable error," and is allowing him to continue to practice under observation.

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"Errors during surgery, misdiagnosis, falls, infections and complications are all to blame for the problems that contribute to the death and injury tolls in England each year. Surgeons performing an operation, hospital blunders 'kill 90,000 patients'

Researchers found that between 8.7 per cent and 10 per cent of hospital stays involved such mistakes and up to a half were preventable".

So the other half are just a fact of life??
7:39:40 AM  
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Patients' confidential medical records are regularly being accessed by people who have no right to them, research by the BBC has revealed.

Figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that in the last year there have been several data security breaches.
7:35:39 AM  
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NHS 'treats patients as illness'. A health watchdog says some NHS trusts in Wales treat patients as 'an illness not as a human being'. [BBC News | UK | UK Edition]
7:30:34 AM  
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