The administration bragged about reducing infections, but didn’t count the type of infection that kills the most patients — Clostridium difficile or C. diff.
That’s like a kid’s report card that leaves out reading and math. It doesn’t tell the whole story.
Truth is, C. diff is raging through hospitals. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head Thomas Frieden calls it one of the “nightmare bacteria.”
It kills 14,000 patients a year, and increases your risk of dying while in the hospital by 75 percent.
The Leapfrog Group, a trusted patient-safety advocacy outfit, released a new assessment of US hospitals on Oct. 30 that gave 41 percent of hospitals C, D or F grades because patients there were harmed by medical mistakes, falls and other injuries and infections.
According to Leapfrog, progress on patient safety is stagnant — and by some measures hospitals are doing worse. That’s the opposite of what the administration claims.
Read it all here