Getting an Infection from the Hospital
How many times have you heard about someone coming home from the hospital after a successful operation, but they just didn’t get well. In fact, they got worse and worse until they ended up back in the hospital again. The doctors couldn’t figure out what happened until certain tests were performed and they found out that the person had an infection.
Usually, this was not just any infection. It was a severe infection, some sort of staph infection – and the biggest problem, besides the fact that these infections are extremely difficult to treat – is that it was caused by the hospital and/or the doctors that did the surgery.
Some of these infections end up in the blood stream; others affect various organs, others, such as urinary infections from catheters infect the bladder and kidneys.
It has been found that the majority of these infections can be prevented – often by doctors and the surgical team being more careful.
The issue of infections has become so prevalent that some hospitals are working on pilot programs that are trying to eliminate as many of them as possible. If the hospitals eliminate enough infections and other issues that bring people back into the hospital for another stay, they will receive bonuses from Medicare. In fact, Medicare is looking into programs that will give hospitals bonuses for better care of patients and pay them less if they have too many readmissions.
Infections can be extremely serious, or even fatal. For instance, a man in Missouri was in the hospital after a heart attack to have a pacemaker put in. Though the operation went very well, he became very ill after he returned home. The reason: a serious staph infection. The result: after 15 more surgeries and 84 days in the hospital, the man is still alive, but lost his right leg, part of his left foot, a kidney and his hearing. He just won a multi-million dollar lawsuit.
If you or someone you know has had surgery and is not getting well as projected, or is getting worse and there doesn’t seem to be an obvious reason, call your surgeon and your regular doctor. Have them test for infection right away. Insist on it. The sooner an infection is addressed, the better the chance it will heal.
Medicare will cover the cost of the hospitalization, and it might save someone else from the same situation because Medicare is beginning to look more carefully at the issue of infections – especially if a hospital has been involved in too many of them.
