[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 158 (Thursday, October 18, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H11756-H11757]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1345
        PREVENTABLE INFECTIONS OCCURRING IN HEALTH CARE SETTINGS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Tim Murphy) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. TIM MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, in the news headlines 
yesterday and today, we learned that more people die from an infection 
called MRSA than die from AIDS. The news, however, is much worse than 
this. And that is, if you look at the amount of preventable infections 
that occur in health care settings, it actually is more like 90,000 
people die, will die this year from preventable infections in health 
care settings, and over 2 million cases will occur.
  The cost to our health care system in America is over $50 billion. As 
we look at the cost of health care and how families cannot afford it, 
it is important that this Chamber take into account what we can do to 
reduce costs and fix the system and not just finance the system. And 
this is one of those areas.
  Now, recently, the Center for Medicare Services, CMS, also said that 
they would move towards not funding treatment of preventable infections 
in hospitals. Now, although that is an important move, and one that 
will save a great deal of money and one that we believe will help 
motivate health care centers to take more action, it still does not 
help with a couple of issues. One is that there's not a universal 
system across America where citizens can find out what are the 
infection rates within certain health care settings. And those are 
important because when one is selecting a hospital for care or going to 
a clinic, it would be good to know what those infection rates are.
  You know, for example, it's mandated by law that airlines have to 
report their on-time rates for when they depart or arrive at the gates 
at an airport. However, you cannot find that information about the 
safety levels of the hospital which you may be going for treatment or 
surgery, and we need to make that available.

  Nineteen different States require some level of this, but, quite 
frankly, it is a hodgepodge of different requirements. Some report to 
the Department of Health. Some report some diseases and not others. And 
we need to make this uniform across the Nation so that patients can 
tell and that it is an important aspect of helping people to understand 
before they go into a hospital.
  Now, the thing about this is these infection rates are preventable. 
You have issues such as MRSA, methicillin-resistant staphylococcus 
aureus; pneumonias; urinary tract infections; and others that could be 
preventable by a couple of important procedures: washing hands; wearing 
gloves for procedures; sterilizing equipment; cleaning up before and 
after procedures, including patients' rooms and other areas;

[[Page H11757]]

making sure that visitors to the hospital follow these same procedures; 
wearing a hospital gown or other clothes so that patients do not get 
exposed from one doctor visiting one room to the next. Some countries 
even require visitors to wear masks and a gown and to scrub. I 
understand in the United Kingdom they require the doctor to make sure 
they scrub and not wear jewelry room to room and to put on a different 
gown as they go to each room so that diseases are not spread. These are 
important steps that can take place. However, we don't have any kind of 
universal reporting system in this country.
  My bill I introduced called H.R. 1174, the Healthy Hospitals Act, 
would help to make this uniform. And that is it would require the 
Secretary of Health to come up with a system of reporting and hospitals 
would give their information and there would be an annual report to 
Congress of best practices to reduce these deadly diseases.
  It is tragic that more people die from infection they pick up at a 
health care center each year than all of our soldiers who died in 
Vietnam. And if we saw this as the emergency that it is, if, for 
example, we had heard that a plane crashed somewhere and a couple 
hundred people died, we would know that all sorts of Federal agencies 
would be all over that investigating that. If the next day another 
plane crashed and a couple hundred more died, an uproar would be across 
America as to what is happening to airplane safety. If it happened a 
third day in a row, probably we would shut down the airports. But here, 
when someone dies every 5 minutes, new infections occur all the time, 
we do not take this kind of action. And we need to see this as an 
emergency, particularly because there has been a number of hospitals 
which have tackled this problem and have solved this problem and have 
virtually eliminated some of their infection rates. We need to do this 
as a nation.
  In addition, my bill, H.R. 1174, would also provide, from the savings 
that come from reducing these infections, a grant program to hospitals 
that have been able to massively reduce or eliminate their infection 
rates.
  We need to gather together as a Congress and no longer ignore this 
problem, which is leading to so many deaths. We need to acknowledge 
those hospitals and health care settings that are leading to major 
changes and cleaning this up and also help those hospitals that are 
not. We can no longer hide from this problem when we see in the news 
the number of deaths that are occurring there, and even now so many 
have this, the things that are occurring in schools as well.
  We have to take vigorous action as a nation to save these lives. And 
I would hope that my colleagues would sign on as supporters of this 
bill.

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