We recognize the gentleman from the great state . . . er, Commonwealth . . . of Pennsylvania.
Check out Jaan Sidorov's political convention edition of Health Wonk Review, up at his Disease Management Care Blog.
David Harlow
The Harlow Group LLC
Health Care Law and Consulting
Hospital-acquired contagions account for about one half of all hospital complications. Therefore, we are dealing with a problem on a massive scale.
There are two basic pieces to learning the cause and control of this dilemma: (1) It is the nature of the beast – infected people go to hospitals because that is where they need to be. (2) Human behavior plays the largest role in the spread of infectious organisms.
There are identifiable standards of care to prevent the spread of communicable diseases in hospitals and to prevent infections of various parts of the body arising from sloppy technique. This is an area of provable negligence that often goes unnoticed.