Currently available statistics regarding preventable deaths, hand hygiene rates and associated costs include:
Preventable Deaths:
- One in five Americans (22%) report that they or a family member have experienced a medical error of some kind. Nationally, this translates into an estimated 22.8 million people with at least one family member who experienced a mistake in a doctor's office or hospital. - The Commonwealth Fund, 2002 (Source)
- The new Commonwealth Fund study suggests that the 1999 Institute of Medicine report, which estimated that there are 44,000 to 98,000 deaths annually due to medical errors, may be the tip of the iceberg in determining the full extent of injuries from medical errors. - The Commonwealth Fund, 2002 (Source)
- Based on the IOM's lower estimate of 44,000 deaths annually, medical errors rank as the eighth leading cause of death in the United States – higher than motor vehicle accidents (43,458), breast cancer (42,297), or AIDS (16,516). Agency for healthcare Research and Quality, 2002 (Source)
- According to the CDC, in American hospitals alone, hospital-acquired infections account for an estimated 1.7 million infections and 99,000 associated deaths each year.(Source)
- Between 5 and 10 percent of the patients who are admitted to U.S. acute-care hospitals acquire one or more infections there, and the risks have steadily increased in recent decades, according to a February 2003 article in The New England Journal of Medicine. (Source)
- According to the CDC, there are an estimated 1.7 million hospital-acquired infections each year which result in approximately 90,000 deaths. A recent study in Emerging Infectious Diseases found that hospital-acquired infections are the sixth leading cause of death nationally, costing the health care industry $6 billion annually. (Source)
- One in every four Medicare patients who were hospitalized from 2000 to 2002 and experienced a patient-safety incident died. (Source)
- An average of 195,000 people in the USA died due to potentially preventable, in-hospital medical errors in each of the years 2000, 2001 and 2002, according to a study of 37 million patient records that was released by HealthGrades. (Source)
- At least 44,000 people, and perhaps as many as 98,000 people die in hospitals each year as a result of medical errors that could have been prevented, according to the Institute of Medicine. (Source)
Hand Hygiene:
- Researchers at Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital say computer keyboards can harbor dangerous germs for as long as 24 hours.
- Research teams at the hospital contaminated keyboards with three types of bacteria that can cause life-threatening infections in severely ill hospital patients. They found that the bacteria known as VRE and MRSA survived for at least 24 hours, while PSAE bacteria survived for an hour.
- When volunteers tapped a key contaminated with MRSA, the bacteria spread to their hands 92 percent of the time. Contamination rates for lower for the other two bacteria -- 50 percent for VRE and 18 percent for PSAE. (Source)
- A CDC study published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus -- one of several superbugs -- is much more prevalent than previously thought. The study found MRSA cases tripled in the United States between 2000 and 2005, and estimated 94,360 people are infected and 18,650 die annually, killing more people annually than HIV. (Source)
- A 2003 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study reported 52 percent of doctors did not clean their hands between patients. A 1997 study found a doctor's lab coat picked up MRSA bacteria 65 percent of the time when leaning over an infected patient. In a 2006 study, 77 percent of blood pressure cuffs on rolling carts were contaminated with MRSA. (Source)
- According to the Centers for Disease Control, recent studies place hand hygiene adherence in hospitals at between 29 percent and 48 percent. (Source)
- Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a widely publicized type of antibiotic-resistant hospital-acquired infection, can cost hospitals roughly $30,000 per case. Brad Sokol, CEO of Fast Track Technologies, a health care consulting firm, has estimated that our nation suffers 13,000 to 26,000 thousand deaths annually from infection caused by contaminated medical devices and instruments. (Source)
Costs:
- Preventable patient injury resulting from medical mistakes cost the economy from $17 billion to $29 billion annually, of which half are healthcare costs. - Institute of Medicine, 1999 (Source)
- The average charges for Medicare patients with a hospital- acquired infection were about $160,000, compared to $32,000 for Medicare patients who did not contract an infection. (Source)
- For Medicaid patients, the average charges were approximately $391,000 for patients who contracted an infection while hospitalized, compared to an average of $29,700 where an infection did not occur. (Source)
- Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a widely publicized type of antibiotic-resistant hospital-acquired infection, can cost hospitals roughly $30,000 per case. (Source)
