One in 20 hospital patients get infections. In California, roughly 200,000 people get hospital infections annually, and 12,000 of them die, according to state Department of Public Health statistics. That makes such infections one of the state's leading causes of death, ahead of automobile accidents and Alzheimer's disease.
Yet these deaths have remained mostly in the shadows. They often are classified as "deaths from complications," an oblique term used in obituaries and often unquestioned by relatives and friends says California Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect lawyer Steven Peck.
Even the best doctors can be baffled whether an infection was acquired before or after a patient was admitted, and if it was the principal cause of death or no factor at all.
Many health care providers historically have viewed hospital infections - going by obscure names or acronyms such as C.diff, CLABSI, VRE and the more familiar MRSA - as a sometimes inevitable consequence of being hospitalized.
That has begun to change. Research has demonstrated that many hospital infections are preventable, and most hospitals, have launched campaigns to rid their facilities of infections.
The change has not come nearly fast enough for many of our loved ones who have died as a result of these facility acquired infections.
"Hospitals are in denial," Elder Abuse Attorney Peck says "Because the public does not have knowledge and understanding of C. difficile, a very potent infection. It is easy for the hospitals to sweep this serious situation under the carpet, and the relatives of the deceased are none the wiser."
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