Patients will get a big, new incentive from the new regulations: hospitals will be paid based on reporting infection rates. It will soon be mandatory for hospitals to report infections that occur during surgery. It will not be tied to how many patients they treat, but it will be tied to how well they handle a particular infection.

Soon you can find out how well hospitals prevent infections. New regulations require hospitals to report to the government certain types of infections that are often very serious. To incentivize hospitals to report infections, they will get a big bump in their payments for complying with the rules.

If hospitals start reporting infections publicly, the government will give payments to hospitals that consistently report infection rates. Carole Mossson died in 2006 from a MRSA infection in his bloodstream. She became a vocal campaigner for public health and infection prevention.

Starting in 2011, hospitals will be required to publicly report several types of dangerous infections that occur in hospital settings. After the first year, hospitals will be paid a specified amount of money based on the amount of infections they report.

Starting next year, hospitals will have to report on infections that occur when people are using a central bloodstream to treat them. 30 percent of deaths are caused by infections that occur during or after delivery of a patient from a hospital. Fortunately, there are several ways hospitals can reduce or eliminate infections. Hospitals will be required by HHS to report infections that are caused by infections that happen while a patient is under anesthesia (Health Care Reform Law), beginning in January 2011. Reports will continue to grow after that date, and some hospitals will continue to get Medicare payments for doing so. Hospitals will have to report infections that occur on a hospital’s main computer, and Medicare will pay hospitals that report properly.

Hospitals in the United States will receive a financial incentive to start reporting infections to the government. Hospitals will get money first for reporting infection rates, but as the program progresses, payment will go up when the hospitals meet a particular standard for infection rates.

It will be as though hospitals will be paid for merely reporting infections to the government. It is like your kids get paid to come and show you their teachers that they came to school to learn something new.

The program’s advocacy group, Safe Patient Project, is optimistic that hospitals will be forced to work harder to prevent infections. By doing so, they will be able to save many lives and to save lots of money. Julia Hallisy, co-founder of the Empowered Patient Coalition in California, says that there is a huge lack of reporting on hospital infections. “The old saying, ‘You cannot truly reduce infections if you do not monitor them,’ will no longer be true. It is time to start reporting serious infections that are not being prevented.”

Some health care advocates have said that the new regulations, while very helpful, are only the beginning of what hospitals must do to be held responsible for harms that patients have suffered. “These regulations were needed to address the harm that patients are incuring as a result of infection,” said Lori Nerbonne of NH Patient Voices. It remains regrettable that patients/consumer may not be able to obtain more information than the number of bloodstream infections that occur when a patient is admitted to the ICU based on how many infections that patient receives; most infections happen at home or in the community. In addition to requiring hospitals to report infection rates, we suggested that the HHS report all infections that occur in patients who are using ventilators.

Kevin Kavanagh of the Health Watch USA suggested to HHS that all hospitals comply with the new regulations that require reporting of infections.

HHS regulations on reporting infections caused by central lines in patients’ bloodstreams and from procedures at their sites in hospitals are a good start, as it means hospitals should begin reporting infections on a much larger scale. We began in many states by putting together advocates who told legislators about the pain and suffering that they had suffered because of hospital infections. In addition, we helped pass laws mandating hospitals report all infections that occur in their care, including hospital infections. These changes are a result of the hard-fought victories that Consumers Union has won in the states. We will closely monitor the way these reporting regulations are implemented and what data is collected, so that people in all states can see “part of the truth,” as Carole puts it.