Hospital-Acquired Infections Are Shown to Increase Costs & Patient Deaths

According to a report by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, Pennsylvania hospital patients who contracted a hospital-acquired infection in 2004 accrued costs seven times higher and were seven times more likely to die than patients who did not acquire infections. The report examines data on patients with commercial health insurance from 180 hospitals.

Pennsylvania is one of six states that has enacted laws requiring reporting of hospital-acquired infections. None of the other states have collected or published their results.

The report is available online at http://www.phc4.org/reports/researchbriefs/032906/

San Francisco Sees Increase in Gonorrhea Cases Among Young African Americans

The San Francisco Department of Public Health, STD Prevention and Control Services alerted medical providers about alarming increases in gonorrhea among young heterosexual African Americans (March 29, 2006). The number of gonorrhea cases among the African American teenagers in San Francisco more than doubled in 2005, compared with 2004. San Francisco in 2004 had the highest rate of gonorrhea infections in the state: 269.4 cases per 100,000 residents. Cases of gonorrhea statewide have increased from 21,632 in 2000 to 30,258 in 2004.

Press release at http://www.sfdph.org/press/2006PR/PR03292006.pdf

Air Pollution Greater Danger to Health

According to a team of American and Canadian epidemiologists who studied two decades’ worth of data on residents of the Los Angeles metro area, exposure to fine particulate matter might increase the risk of heart attacks, lung cancer and other illnesses by two to three times more than previously thought.

The study is to appear in the November 2006 issue of Epidemiology. Citation: Michael Jerrett, Richard T. Burnett, Renjun Ma, C. Arden Pope III, Daniel Krewski, K. Bruce Newbold, George Thurston, Yuanli Shi, Norm Finkelstein, Eugenia E. Calle and Micheal J. Thun, “Spatial Analysis of Air Pollution and Mortality in Los Angeles,” Epidemiology. Vol. 16, No. 6.

Tuberculosis in the United States, 2005

The U.S. tuberculosis rate in 2005 was the lowest since the federal government began collecting data on TB in 1953, but the number of cases of multi-drug resistant TB, or MDR-TB, increased for the first time in a decade in 2004, according to Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) March 24, 2006, 55(11);305-308. This report is online, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5511a3.htm

Health Professions High

A new high school (which opened last fall) that is part of the Sacramento City Unified School District -- Health Professions High -- was created in part to address the current and projected shortages of health professionals. Students are required to take a "rigorous science-laden curriculum" to give students a head start in the health care fields of their choice. The school could become a national model for developing a more diverse health care work force, about a third of the students are Latino, 40% are black and the rest are white or Asian.

Nursing Faculty Needed

California colleges can train only about half of nurses needed in the state because of a shortage of nursing-education faculty, according to the California Nurses Association. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year announced a $90-million, five-year plan to increase college nursing faculty levels. However, nurses in clinical settings are in high demand and can have higher incomes than teaching faculty, causing some qualified teachers to return to clinical work.

Ranking of Hospitals by Heart Surgery Death Rates

The Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development www.oshpd.ca.gov/ released "The California Report on Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery" based on 2003 hospital data. The report marks the first time all 121 hospitals in the state that perform cardiac bypass surgery have been required to release performance data. The OSHPD report is available online at http://www.oshpd.cahwnet.gov/HQAD/Outcomes/Studies/cabg/2003Report/2003Report.pdf

Citation: Parker JP, Li Z, Danielsen B, Marcin J, Dai J, Mahendra G, Steimle AE. The California Report on Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery 2003 Hospital Data, Sacramento, CA: California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, February 2006.

Later this year, OSHPD is expected to release a report ranking the performance of individual doctors who perform coronary bypass surgery. The state also is compiling reports examining hospitals' death rates for all patients admitted for heart attacks, pneumonia and hip replacement surgery, as well as for complications experienced by women during childbirth.The reports are intended to help consumers make more informed decisions when seeking medical care.

Doctor-Assisted Suicide AB 651 2005-2006 Session

According to a February Field Poll, fifty-seven (57) percent of California adults support a bill (AB 651) that would allow terminally ill patients to obtain life-ending medications. Under the bill, terminally ill patients would have to be declared mentally competent by two doctors and wait for 15 days before they would be able to request a lethal prescription to self-administer.

The survey was conducted between Feb. 12 and 26. Five hundred adult residents were polled for the survey, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. A majority of Californians has supported doctor-assisted suicides in polls since 1979, according to Field Poll Director Mark DiCamillo. Poll results are available online http://field.com/fieldpollonline/subscribers/RLS2188.pdf

AB 651 can be found at the official site for California legislative information
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=ab_651&sess=CUR&house=B&author=berg

SAMHSA Prepare Behavioral Health Registry

HHS' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration is creating a Web-based tool to help behavioral health providers research evidence-based treatment programs. SAMHSA, for two years, has been expanding its National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices to cover interventions in all areas of mental health and substance abuse prevention and treatment . Officials hope the expanded registry will shorten the amount of time it takes for people to adopt best practices.The registry is expected to go online in the fall.

Local Television Health Care Coverage Lacks Context

Local television news coverage of health care issues often lacks adequate context and in some cases is inaccurate, according to a study published in the March 2006 issue of the American Journal of Managed Care.


James M. Pribble, MD; Kenneth M. Goldstein, PhD; Erika Franklin Fowler, MA; Matthew J. Greenberg, MD; Stacey K. Neol, MD; Joel D. Howell, MD, PhD. "Medical News for the Public to Use? What's on Local TV News" Am J Manag Care. 2006;12:170-176.
http://www.ajmc.com/files/articlefiles/AJMC_06marPribble170to76.pdf

Oregon Releases 2005 Assisted Suicide Data

According to the first report issued since the U.S. Supreme Court in January upheld the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, the number of terminally ill Oregon residents who sought physician-assisted suicide remained about the same between 2004 and 2005. The report released by the state Department of Human Services indicates that 38 state residents sought assisted suicide in 2005, compared with 37 in 2004.

The law, which took effect in 1997, allows physicians to prescribe, but not administer, a lethal dose of prescription drugs to a terminally ill patient after two physicians agree that the patient has less than six months to live, has decided to die voluntarily and can make health care decisions.

The full report is available at http://www.oregon.gov/DHS/ph/pas/

Older U.S. Residents Living Longer

Researchers from the Census Bureau and the National Institute on Aging (compiled population data from Census surveys and other federal sources, including CDC, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Medicare claims), found that older U.S. residents are living longer and healthier lives with fewer disabilities.

The study, titled "65+ in the United States: 2005," is available at
http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/p23-209.pdf