Comment by apathy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by apathy | Hacker News Reader

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Or (perhaps more likely) Medicare/Medicaid and/or private insurers might start penalizing the ones that are screwing it up (by renegotiating contracts and reimbursements). I know of one center where executive laziness led to a $2 million fine (completely unjustified) for a line infection in an immunosuppressed patient. Which was cleared up in hours, probably didn't come from the line to begin with, and got said executive fired (because if there's one thing hospital "leadership" understands, it's money).

Actually I have all sorts of examples of the above, but the point is that oftentimes the data is "corrupted" on the way to the collection point(s). Anyways, the executive (VP of some bullshit) got his walking papers and funnily enough, no more reportable line infections that didn't come from lines.

So at least sometimes there are happy endings, sort of...

Sorry, I am a little confused. Why was it a happy ending? Because the VP was just a titular post? Also, looking at your comment, it reads like the problem went away not because the hospital improved, but because the data stopped being reported. This does not look like a happy ending either. And if the line infection was cleared up in hours, how did it also "probably didn't come from the line to begin with"?

The VP was a douche and the "line infection" was almost certainly not from a line in the first place. The patient was on IST, so calling any random opportunistic infection a central line infection is (at best) irresponsible.

Reporting incorrect data can be worse than reporting nothing at all. Here are the guidelines: http://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/pdfs/faqs/faqs-v-6_clabsi.pdf

CLIs are only supposed to be reported when the central line can reasonably be implicated as the vector and the blood is the primary infection site. Neither was established.

As far as cleaning up procedures, there will always be room for further improvement, but that's no reason to accept a $2 million fine (which still had to be paid) as a cost of doing business when the "root cause" was incorrect reporting.

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