April 9, 2012

Last week, Forbes (4/6) reported, “Hospitals across the country are using near-total discretion in the way they disclose infections that occur as a result of surgeries, cause over 8,000 deaths annually in the US, and cost an additional $10 billion per year to the healthcare system, a new study underscoring the need for public reporting standards has found.” The study, “published in the Journal for Healthcare Quality, and authored by researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, shows that only 21 states currently have legislation that requires monitoring and public reporting for surgical site infections.” The researchers found, “of those, only eight states actually make the data publicly available, and only a total of 10 procedures – out of 250 possible types of surgeries – get reported.”

Lundy Law understands that public reporting standards should be made more available to the public. There should be more states to have legislation that requires monitoring and public reporting for surgical site infection.