Date: 2007-12-19
Speaker: TIM MURPHY (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Pennsylvania

Madam Speaker. over the last several months. and certainly over the last 2 weeks. Congress has had a number of accomplishments. Today we did a number of things that were important such as funding for our troops. We also improved toy safety. But there have been a number of other opportunities which. unfortunately. with the schedule that we missed. that we could have done and should have done and I hope next year we will do. And that is while we are looking at issues to improve health care and reduce health care costs. when we talk about Medicare or Medicaid or SCHIP. one of the things we should have done was really work to lower costs and save money and save lives. We hear both sides of the aisle these days talking about the costs of everything: The national debt in the trillions. earmarks need to be reduced. health care is too expensive. But too often we keep talking about these problems or saying perhaps Congress can find a way to pay for these things. But shouldnt we look at how to fix the problem and not just finance. it? We had a solution in front of us that could have saved $50 billion in health care costs. But it didnt happen. Earlier this year I introduced H.R. 1174. the Healthy Hospitals Act. which received strong bipartisan support. This legislation is a simple solution to lower costs associated with hospitaland health careacquired infections. The implementation of this bill is not expensive. it only requires hospitals to publicly disclose their hospitalacquired infection rates and follow simple cleanliness techniques that we already expect our caretakers to follow. things you assume that hospitals and clinics are doing. but. unfortunately. they are not always doing that: washing their hands. wearing gloves. sterilizing equipment before and after uses. testing patients for other diseases prior to treatment or admission to hospitals. giving antibiotics before and after surgery. These arent revolutionary ideas. theyre just ideas that too often are not followed. Well. how much of a difference does it really make letting the public know about hospitalacquired infection rates of individual hospitals? In my home State of Pennsylvania. to give a great example of what hospitals can do when theyre held accountable for these infections. many hospitals. where they are now required by law to publicly post on the Internet their infection rates. have seen their rates drop to zero or near zero. Incredible. and a good story. According to the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council. the average charge of hospitalization in 2005 for a patient who became infected with a hospitalacquired infection was over $185.000. but the average charge for a patient without infection was $31.000. Thats $31.000 versus $185.000. a difference of over $150.000 per patient. Doesnt that tell us what we can be doing to save money and save lives? Now. multiply that statistic by 49 other States and we see what happens. We need to seek areas where we can reduce costs. Let me point out the grim statistics of this year as of today. This years toll of health care acquired infections. such as pneumonia. urinary tract infections. or whats been called the "super bug of methicillinresistant infections." as of today. 1.934.246 cases. 87.010 deaths. and over $48 billion spent on infections people acquired when they go to the hospital or go to the doctor. Twentytwo other States have taken some steps to reduce these. and we need to make sure we make this a universal system of recording. I hope that we work this next year to emphasize patient choice. patient quality. and patient safety. and pass H.R.