Forbes' Focus on Hospital Safety

By Jennifer Hopfinger
February 26, 2008 03:14 PM

“Stop That Patient!” exclaims the headline on the cover of the March 10th issue of Forbes magazine. The issue includes a special report, “How Safe Are Our Hospitals,” which examines how the health care industry is failing the consumer by forcing patients to seek care at dangerous hospitals.

“Hospitals are still the heart of the health care industry, consuming a third of the $2 trillion annual U.S. health care bill. Some are very good. But many are not, brimming with infectious bugs, systemic errors and negative hospitality. And because the hospital industry does all it can to thwart competition, many communities are stuck with the hospitals they have,” the magazine writes. In the cover story, “Bad Medicine,” writer David Whelan looks at why specialty hospitals provide higher quality care.

The article gives some scary stats: one in 16 hospital patients will develop an infection during their stay, one in 200 will die from medical error, more than 100,000 hospital patients die from preventable infections each year--which is more than those who die from AIDS, breast cancer and auto accidents combined. Americans are five times more likely to die from visiting a hospital than from not having health insurance.

“Patients have a choice, but it's not widespread yet. It's called the specialty hospital, a center that focuses on the care of a particular body part such as the heart, spine or joints, or on a specific disease such as cancer,” Whelan writes. There are only 200 specialty hospitals in the U.S., out of 6,000 total, and according to the article, they offer better, safer care at a lower cost.

So why aren’t there more specialty hospitals? According to the article, “over the past several years the hospital industry, through legally questionable bullying tactics and arduous lobbying, has all but stamped out expansion of the specialty hospital sector, the only real competitive threat it has ever faced.”

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Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism