According to state records, major hospital infections broke out eleven times last year in New Jersey. However, unless you're working at the hospitals where it happened, you're not going to find out which ones had the problem. While state officials do disclose the name of the pathogen and the county where a serious hospital infection took place, they don't name the specific hospital where it happen. That practice is drawing fire from critics, who say that such secrecy only makes the problem worse. Increasingly, nudged by fears of antibiotic-resistant infections like MRSA, states have begun to collect and disclose hospital-specific infection data. However, New Jersey is behind the curve in a number of ways. Not only do its reports mask which hospitals had the problem, the data it uses is very old, with this year's reporting drawing on stats compiled in 2001.
To learn more about New Jersey's hospital infection report policies:
- read this article from The Associated Press
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