Urge US Hospitals to Disclose Infection Rates, sez Consumers Union

Consumer Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, is sending an email to its subscribers encouraging them to demand that local hospitals reveal their infection rates. I think that's a great idea.

Here's the text of the email, with live links for you to click through to their informative website:

If you must go into a hospital, do you ever expect to get a life-threatening infection there? That is exactly what happens to two million Americans every year - one in every 20 patients - and 90,000 of them die.

Many of these infections are now resistant to anti-biotic treatment and spreading into the community from their origins in hospital settings. You may have read about this growing problem in the latest issue of Consumer Reports magazine.

You can help stop hospital infections in your community by visiting www.stophospitalinfections.org and demanding information about your local hospital's infection rates and prevention practices.

Hospitals keep their infections secret from everyone, even though infection rates are on the rise. Healthcare workers wash their hands far less than they should, particularly in critical areas like intensive care, surgery, anesthesia and the emergency room.

Making infection rates public will help you find out about the safety record of your local hospital and will give hospitals a strong incentive to more seriously deal with this costly and dangerous problem.

You can help give consumers in your own community better information about hospital-acquired infections by signing a simple petition. We hope that more than 100,000 people will sign the petition at www.stophospitalinfections.org in the next few weeks so we can deliver a serious message across the nation.

After you have taken action, please forward this on to your friends and family and ask them to join you in saving lives.

Sincerely,

Jim Guest
Executive Director
Consumers Union of the U.S.
101 Truman Ave.
Yonkers, NY 10703