Rate of Infections at Public Hospitals Is Down

The rate of infections acquired at the city's 11 public hospitals has decreased since 2005, the Health and Hospitals Corp. announced yesterday.

HHC officials said the rate of blood infections associated with a kind of intravenous hookup called a central line decreased 55% to 3.4 per 1,000 central line days in 2007, from 7.6 in 2005. The rate of pneumonia among patients on ventilators decreased 78%, to 2.3 per ventilator days in 2007, from 10.5 in 2005.

In recent years, HHC has launched aggressive prevention practices to reduce preventable infections. In September, HHC began reporting hospital quality and patient safety data to the public.

"Our aggressive focus on evidence-based prevention practices is helping us get closer to our goal of eradicating such infections from the intensive care units in our public hospitals," HHC's president, Alan Aviles, said in a statement.