Rates of C. difficile dropped by more than one quarter in Ontario after the province made it mandatory for hospitals to publicly report cases of the deadly hospital-acquired infection, according to a new study on the patient safety problem.
Researchers say the drop in rates suggest that public reporting helped to focus hospitals’ attention on C. difficile, prompting them to find ways to prevent and reduce the spread of the infectious organism
Via Harry K., who writes;
So let me get this right: Only public exposure aka accountability made $300,000+ a year hospital administrators worry about not killing people needlessly?
It really really is time that public administrators and politicians were exposed to the same level of accountability as we are in the private sector.
In my property management business if say a fire door in one of my buildings does not latch closed properly and I do not notice it but the fire prevention office did after a couple of visits, I will be charged and be successfully prosecuted and face a fine of $1,000. And nobody has died.
So what can anyone say about healthcare administrators that allow people to die? Could you imagine how much money or how many lives could be saved in our country if public administrators would feel the same pain of at least a reduced pay cheque like the private sector does if a mistake happens?
There is never any accountability in the public sector.
Which is why it needs to shrink.
Johann, exactly.
Hmmmm? Are the reports of the cases being doctored?
Ken: That was my thought too.
Nothing changed, it was just reported differently.
Thomas Sowell nails it on so many fronts, but this quote stays with me for all gov’t related screw-ups;
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong. ”
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_sowell.html#8WjDZMZtKVis3YGJ.99
There is never any accountability in the public sector….
Posted by: Johan i Kanada at July 23, 2012 10:02 AM
Sure there is – it’s called promotion. 😉
Public service is operated on the Peter Murphy Principle:
Once a guy reaches his level of incomptetence, anything that can go wrong, will.
’bout sums it up.
All these total morons needed to do to reduce infection was to WASH THEIR HANDS. So many hospitals had to do internal PR campaigns “reminding” people to wash their hands with soap and water!!! This disgusting laziness was killing people. It was epidemic sloth and laziness among administrators, doctors, nurses and cleaning staff.
The “cure” to these epidemics was soap and water. And yes, it did take public shaming in the media to enforce hand-washing.
“$300,000+ a year hospital administrators”
Yes, and isn’t it funny that the Ontario Health Minister hasn’t been publicly ranting about hospital administrators’ pay – only “millionaire doctors”?
That’s a major point about the private sector; it exists only within the WILL of its consumers. Provide a bad product or service and that private business will disappear.
The public sector, on the other hand, has isolated itself from accountability. And it has set itself up in most cases as a monopoly; the consumer has no option but to use that hospital, that school, that government service.
Plus, the public service unions have moved the focus in the public sector from providing a service to setting up a unique unaccountable, jobs-for-life elitist set of workers, with salaries, benefits and pensions unavailable to the private sector.
Imagine if hospital admin people were paid on performance and that hospitals were paid based on the volume of services they performed and the quality of the outcomes (with adjustments for the level of difficulty).
Add a publishing of all of that data on a realtime or near realtime basis to a public website (or smartphone app)to the above.
How much more efficient and better quality would those hospitals be?
“I do not notice it but the fire prevention office did after a couple of visits, I will be charged and be successfully prosecuted and face a fine of $1,000”
That works in the private sector, but not in the world of socialism. In the private sector, fines harm you in relation to competition. In socialized medicine, the government is fining itself, and there is no competition. The government would fine you with one hand and then hand over your funding with the other. Whatever they take in fines they must make up for with funding. And since there are no competitors, no amount of fines will ever make a difference, customers will still be stuck with the same choices.
Even the administrators themselves will suffer no consequences. In a world with no competition, you are not accountable to customers/patients, you are accountable to your bureaucrat bosses, whom have no interest in exposing their own incompetence.
Gord – right. What about other public services? Schools. Road repair, public transit, other public services such as hydro, water, garbage.
Heh – the unions would never permit their employees to be held accountable.
Just imagine a President of a group of private hospitals during a board of director’s meeting discussing the topic of the numbers of patients (customers) hospital x has killed over the last period and how the administrator responsible is still employed by the company. That is a conversation that wouldn’t happen.
Think really hard. Have you ever seen a nurse wash his/her hands? I’ve seen doctors wash their hands. I’ve seen fast food employees wash their hands. I’ve seen mechanics wash their hands. Ive never seen a nurse wash her hands. Never.
Coach I live with a nurse,trust me she washes her hands, and is a clean freak.
At a hospital where I volunteer, the union did not agree to the installation of hand-cleaning stations before they were installed and therefore put out a directive saying that cleaning of the hands was “optional”. It wasn’t for we volunteers though! Now it has been “union sanctioned” I still see paid staff walking right by the stations on their way to or from work.
A recent report showed that a main hospital in Vancouver had no idea what an operation cost. Hospitals should be paid for what they do, not just given a block of money. In the German system, the patient is looked at as a customer (since the hospital is paid on a per service basis) and not as a liability as under our system.
One of my best friends died of C. deficile that he caught in an Ontario hospital. he went in for a liver transplant, which probably cost the system upwards of $100,000. Then he spent weeks in intensive care and months “recovering” in hospital, warding off one hospital infection. Then he was home for a few weeks, but he’d contracted C deficile before he left the hospital. So he was back, slowly deteriorating and in isolation for three or four months. Then into isolation/intensive care for several weeks. Finally, they told him the best he could hope for was a one-way to a nursing home. At that point, he had them pull the plug. It must have cost upwards of a million dollars, all because they didn’t keep the hospital clean. And I’m sure he wasn’t the only one.
Provide a bad product or service and that private business will disappear.
Not always true. Universities are an example. Also, the ‘Credentialism’ thread pointed out some other parasitical ‘services’.
Although, gov’t has a hand in making some of them necessary.
fiddle, aren’t universities in Canada are a gov’t entity..
Universities, even nominally private ones in the US, aren’t really private free market entitites.
For one simple reason:
GOVERNMENT BACKED STUDENT LOANS.
Which:
a) cause tuition to wildly increase and
b) (related) causes the universities to overly focus on amentites.
I had a friend once who was a “successful” owner of a private vocational school. I was always mystified by his vituperative hissing against private enterprise while being a “successful” “businessman”.
UNTIL a wiser friend pointed out that basically his customers were almost totally subsidized by government-backed student loans and therefore his revenue was essentially government money.
In conclusion, he was being perfectly rational is espousing big activist government and denigrating private enterprise.
These “millionaire” doctors are legally and morally responsible for life of patients. Bureaucrats are responsible for promoting wellness in culturally diverse environments why applying multidisciplinary team work approach and other protocol and reports shows that used to be called smoke and mirrors. Politicians are increasingly responsible for invoking envy and blame.
Attack on doctors marks only the start of the final stage of system collapse. Nurses being under union umbrella are for now excluded, but their turn to be blamed will come. Then low level scapegoat bureaucrat or two are sent to a prison; usually that happens because of some financial irregularities. Politicians in panic would try control and micromanage. Patients have to prepare for enduring the chaos of transformation. Shortages of drugs, medical services and supplies are on the horizon. Sucks to be old when pendulum swings.
One more thing:
All the policies in the world, all the publishing of results which Gord Tulk recommends, will come to naught. Think of those auditor general reports. Yawn.
Nah: the only form of accountability is that which comes from all-out competition in the free market.
For this reason, for example, I don’t call for the abolition of public schooling as much as for simply abolishing its tax-funded monopoly. Some European nations provide universal health care in the context of open competition in the free market.
The hallmark of the McGuinty regime was insulating administrators and public sector workers from public accountability – its a soviet-light regime.
– Just ask Jesse Sansone
Having worked in the healthcare system (lastly in Nova Scotia) I am all too aware of the c. dificile issues. I am kind of surprised though that hospitals in Ontario had to be (?) legislated to make outbreaks public. In Nova Scotia it was hardly a state secret when an outbreak would occur. Besides the source, every healthcare facility would be preaching from the good book of Hospital Hygiene even more than they did before. Without soiling my browser by loading the TorStar, I’d say some government flunkie or politician is trying to take credit for the (apparent) drop in cases.
Back in the Physician-led days of yesteryear, i.e., before Coffee-In-The-Lounge of the hospital, and therefore before Administrators became overseers of patient health, hospitals reeked of antiseptic and every floor and wall was mopped down with stuff that would knock the C out of dificile in a second. Does anyone else remember that? Of course, that was not considered ‘enlightened’ or ‘patient-friendly’. When the SARS contagion was on, hospitals were instructed to do all floors and walls in anticeptic but the ‘all safe’ sign came on again until C-Dificile showed up.
As for nurses, in hospital, where germs are flying all over the place or at home where I have regular care from some super nurses, they are enormously conscious of the risks and wash their hands in anticeptic several times during a treatment.
public administrators of any hue:
Have no hearts only an open wallet. They are patronage appointments. Unless something impacts them personally,it free & easy money all the way.
Kile lotto money they never really earn a dime themselves it s all given to them. No accounting , no one over them.
The rates are only going to go down until the spotlight is off them.
Enforcement of infection control policies is not something administrators give a crap about. In fact, there are a number of people who would be happy to tell the world about their employers flaunting disregard and active efforts to interfere with infection control efforts. They are members of CHICA (http://chica.org/index.php) abd I often wonder just where CHICA stands on this abuse of their members.
One solution would be to offer a bounty to ANY employee who blows the whistle on these violations.
“Could you imagine how much money or how many lives could be saved in our country if public administrators would feel the same pain of at least a reduced pay cheque like the private sector does if a mistake happens?”
Could you imagine how many lives could be saved in our country if the DAMNED POLITCIANS and their loved ones were subject to the exact same quality of healthcare as the rest of us instead of getting first tier health care while the rest of us get shoddy second tier ?