[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 195 (Wednesday, December 19, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H16916-H16917]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       THE HEALTHY HOSPITALS ACT

  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. Madam Speaker, over the last several 
months, and certainly over the last 2 weeks, Congress has had a number 
of accomplishments. Today we did a number of things that were important 
such as funding for our troops. We also improved toy safety. But there 
have been a number of other opportunities which, unfortunately, with 
the schedule that we missed, that we could have done and should have 
done and I hope next year we will do. And that is while we are looking 
at issues to improve health care and reduce health care costs, when we 
talk about Medicare or Medicaid or SCHIP, one of the things we should 
have done was really work to lower costs and save money and save lives.
  We hear both sides of the aisle these days talking about the costs of 
everything: The national debt in the trillions, earmarks need to be 
reduced, health care is too expensive. But too often we keep talking 
about these problems or saying perhaps Congress can find a way to pay 
for these things. But shouldn't we look at how to fix the problem and 
not just finance it?
  We had a solution in front of us that could have saved $50 billion in 
health care costs. But it didn't happen.
  Earlier this year I introduced H.R. 1174, the Healthy Hospitals Act, 
which received strong bipartisan support. This legislation is a simple 
solution to lower costs associated with hospital- and health care-
acquired infections.
  The implementation of this bill is not expensive; it only requires 
hospitals to publicly disclose their hospital-acquired infection rates 
and follow simple cleanliness techniques that we already expect our 
caretakers to follow, things you assume that hospitals and clinics are 
doing, but, unfortunately, they are not always doing that: washing 
their hands, wearing gloves, sterilizing equipment before and after 
uses, testing patients for other diseases prior to treatment or 
admission to hospitals, giving antibiotics before and after surgery. 
These aren't

[[Page H16917]]

revolutionary ideas; they're just ideas that too often are not 
followed.
  Well, how much of a difference does it really make letting the public 
know about hospital-acquired infection rates of individual hospitals? 
In my home State of Pennsylvania, to give a great example of what 
hospitals can do when they're held accountable for these infections, 
many hospitals, where they are now required by law to publicly post on 
the Internet their infection rates, have seen their rates drop to zero 
or near zero. Incredible, and a good story.
  According to the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, 
the average charge of hospitalization in 2005 for a patient who became 
infected with a hospital-acquired infection was over $185,000, but the 
average charge for a patient without infection was $31,000. That's 
$31,000 versus $185,000, a difference of over $150,000 per patient. 
Doesn't that tell us what we can be doing to save money and save lives? 
Now, multiply that statistic by 49 other States and we see what 
happens. We need to seek areas where we can reduce costs.
  Let me point out the grim statistics of this year as of today. This 
year's toll of health care acquired infections, such as pneumonia, 
urinary tract infections, or what's been called the ``super bug of 
methicillin-resistant infections,'' as of today, 1,934,246 cases, 
87,010 deaths, and over $48 billion spent on infections people acquired 
when they go to the hospital or go to the doctor.
  Twenty-two other States have taken some steps to reduce these, and we 
need to make sure we make this a universal system of recording.
  I hope that we work this next year to emphasize patient choice, 
patient quality, and patient safety, and pass H.R. 1174.

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