Harming through Protection?
- 21 February 2008
- journal article
- editorial
- Published by Massachusetts Medical Society in New England Journal of Medicine
- Vol. 358 (8) , 768-769
- https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmp0800372
Abstract
About 80,000 catheter-related bloodstream infections occur in U.S. intensive care units (ICUs) each year, causing as many as 28,000 deaths and costing the health care system as much as $2.3 billion. If there were procedures that could prevent these infections, wouldn't we encourage hospitals to introduce them? And wouldn't we encourage the development, testing, and dissemination of strategies that would get clinicians to use them? Apparently not, judging from the experience of Peter Pronovost and other Johns Hopkins investigators who helped 103 ICUs in 67 Michigan hospitals carry out a highly successful infection-control effort,1 only to run into major problems with federal regulators.Keywords
This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit:
- The Ethics of Using Quality Improvement Methods in Health CareAnnals of Internal Medicine, 2007
- An Intervention to Decrease Catheter-Related Bloodstream Infections in the ICUNew England Journal of Medicine, 2006
- Special Report: The Ethics of Using QI Methods to Improve Health Care Quality and SafetyHastings Center Report, 2006