The fourth largest cause of death in the United States — responsible for more fatalities that AIDS, breast cancer, and car accidents all together — is medical malpractice from bacterial infections in hospitals, according to the San Diego News Network.
The personal injury attorneys at our San Diego firm believe that you should know everything you can about the doctor and hospital giving you medical treatment for anything, which includes knowing how sanitary the physician and facility are, down to what type of material they use they use on their tools and counter surfaces.
Hospital infections are the 4th biggest cause of wrongful deaths in America.
Hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) are a type of medical malpractice that can severely worsen a personal injury or in many cases cause the wrongful death of a person who was treated at an unclean medical facility. Bacteria can linger on surgical tools and medical equipment before being transferred into a person’s body. Two million people are injured each year in the United States as a result.
Of those two million medical malpractice infections, nearly 240,000 are reported within the state of California. Here in San Diego, Scripps Mercy was fined for a case of medical malpractice not because of infection, but because of a surgical oversight. Is it possible that cleanliness and sanitary precautions are being overlooked at hospitals in your area?
“California is responsible for well over 10 percent of (national medical malpractice statistics),” Dr. Michael Schmidt, professor of microbiology at the Medical University of South Carolina. “In California, 13,500 people will die from a hospital infection.”
Schmidt’s solution, which three hospitals in the United States are adopting, is to replace their stainless steel, aluminum and plastic surfaces in ICUs with Antimicrobial Copper, which has been shown to kill bacteria that is usually immune to the effects of antibiotics.
From bed rails to keyboards, copper will be introduced as a surface material in an effort to drastically reduce the amount of bacteria that can build up in a medical facility before it infects a patient and causes significant bodily harm.
“Copper has some promise, but it also has a number of challenges,” Dr. Frank Myers, director of clinical epidemiology at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego. “I’m not optimistic it’s going to be successful … We don’t want to spend money on things that aren’t proven.”
The question of copper’s success at lowering infection rates will come down to effectiveness over cost, but our San Diego personal injury attorneys know that there is no price that you can put on your health. If research ends up showing that copper will significantly drop the amount of medical malpractice deaths caused by HAIs, then money should not be the issue, nor should it ever be.
Whether copper or steel, expensive or not, the patient’s health and well-being should always come first.
Call us now at 1-800-655-6585 for a FREE consultation with an experienced San Diego personal injury attorney or click here to submit your case for a FREE online review. We have associates who speak both English and Spanish, so contact us if you wish to seek legal council.
About Michael PinesMichael Pines is a former insurance company attorney who specializes in car accident injury. While he was an insurance attorney, he learned from behind the scenes on how insurance companies work and how they decided to pay injured people. Now that he works against insurance companies, Michael's inside knowledge has resulted in significant benefits to his clients injured in car accidents.
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Tags: hospital-acquired infections, medical malpractice, personal injury, San Diego hospitals
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