Infection prevention saves money, lives
A number of factors drive up the cost of healthcare, including healthcare-acquired infections (HAI) patients contract during a hospital stay.

In an effort to improve patient safety and save billions of dollars in medical charges related to HAIs, nearly two dozen states now require hospitals to report these infections.

Pennsylvania was the first to mandate such reporting in 2004. Other states that have followed suit include Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New Hampshire and New York.

The CDC estimates that nearly 2 million patients annually contract an infection in the hospital—and for more than 90,000 patients, it's fatal. HAIs include surgical site infections, IV-related blood infections from bacteria or viruses, antibiotic-resistent Staphylococcus (Staph) infections, and catheter-associated urinary tract infections.

The Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (www.phc4.org), the state agency charged with analyzing and reporting cost and quality healthcare information, reports that the average hospital charge for patients with a HAI was $185,260 in 2005 compared to an average charge of $31,389 for patients without an HAI.

Marc Volavka, executive director of the Pennsylvania council, told the Washington Post that annual medical charges for HAIs could easily amount to $50 billion in the United States.

Hospital ownership shifts to for-profits
From 1999-2005, there was a steady decline in state/local government and nonprofit hospitals in the United States, according to statehealthfacts.org. For-profit hospitals, for the same period, however, increased in number.

It's a trend that is troublesome to the AFT. "Hospital administration in for-profit hospitals is more concerned about providing a profit to shareholders than quality care to patients," says Joni Ketter, associate director of AFT Healthcare. "Not only are lengths of stay shorter in for-profit hospitals but they also provide much less care for people without health insurance, and their numbers of nurses caring for patients are consistently less."

The number of for-profit hospitals nationwide numbered 868 in 2005 compared with 747 in 1999. Government hospitals, on the other hand, numbered 1,110 in 2005, down from 1,197 in 1999. And nonprofit hospitals numbered 2,958 in 2005 down from 3,012 in 1999.

Nationwide, nonprofit hospitals, however, have the largest patient capacity—counted in beds. In 2005, nonprofit facilities had 1.9 beds per 1,000 population. State/local government facilities and for-profit hospitals each had 0.4 beds per 1,000 population.