Is this health care’s “man on the moon” moment?
For the past four years, Johns Hopkins patient safety researchers and our partners across the country have been working on an ambitious effort to reduce central line-associated bloodstream infections. The project spanned 44 states and included 1,100 intensive care units. On Monday, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, who funded this project, released the preliminary results of this project. They report that our collective efforts have reduced infections by 40 percent, prevented 2,000 infections, saved 500 lives, and avoided $34 million in health care costs. Stunning!
Below are my prepared comments from a press conference hosted yesterday by AHRQ to share this news:
On a snowy night in February 2001, Josie King, an adorable 18-month-old girl who looked hauntingly like my daughter, was taken off of life support and died in her mother’s arms at Johns Hopkins. Josie died from a cascade of errors that started with a central line-associated bloodstream infection, a type of infection that kills nearly as many people as breast cancer or prostate cancer.
Shortly after her death, her mother, Sorrel, asked if Josie would be less likely to die now. She wanted to know whether care was safer. We would not give her an answer; she deserves one. At the time, our rates of infections, like most of the country’s, were sky high. I was one of the doctors putting in these catheters and harming patients. No clinician wants to harm patients, but we were.Read More »Is this health care’s “man on the moon” moment?