[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13884-13885]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         HEALTHY HOSPITALS ACT

  (Mr. TIM MURPHY of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to 
address the House for 1 minute.)
  Mr. TIM MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, I know much of our 
concern is on energy and gas prices, but I want to remind Members of 
some grim statistics on other issues.
  If an airplane crashed today and 250 people died, we would send the 
FAA and every other Federal agency to investigate. If the same thing 
happened tomorrow, our concerns would escalate, too. If it happened a 
third day, we would shut down the airline industry. We don't seem to do 
that same thing,

[[Page 13885]]

and we have that many deaths each day from infections in hospitals.
  In April of 2005, when I first started talking about infections in 
hospitals, we have had since that time over 6 million cases, over 
320,000 deaths, and have wasted $162 billion. Just in 2008 alone, 
969,000 cases, 47,000 deaths, and $24 billion.
  When I introduced my Healthy Hospitals Act, H.R. 1174, the aim was to 
have hospitals declare their infection rates so people could compare 
hospitals so we could do something about it.
  Hospitals can clean up their act. They can reduce their infections, 
and Congress needs to make sure there is a law of the land requiring 
them. People have a right to know if they are going to leave a hospital 
at all.

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