Every year millions go to hospitals for routine checkups or because of a serious health problem. Once they are at the hospital the general consensus is that they are in a safe and bacteria free environment. The thought of contacting an infection from a hospital visit or stay generally doesn’t cross one’s mind. However, several new studies by non-profit organizations are now challenging this assumption.

Typically in the US one out of 24 people that go a hospital for medical reasons tend to get infections. This is a very serious problem for seniors because these infections delay healing, cause additional trips to the hospital, increase their health cost bills, and in the most severe cases – death. Surprisingly, more than 90,000 people a year die from unwanted infections they unknowingly contracted from being in a hospital.

This is a huge wakeup call for all U.S. hospitals. Not only is this terrible for the families of those contacting infections but it is a significant “negative hit” for the hospital’s reputations plus it costs hospitals billions of dollars a year to treat these people. Further, these situations help to fuel the increase in insurance premiums to cover care of these very same people.

There are many reasons why this situation occurs. One of the most accepted answers is that bacteria continually build up new resistance to antibiotics. Consequently, hospitals nationwide are now starting to keep track of the cause of death of their patients – Currently, infections are the eighth highest cause.

The majority of bacteria are spread by touch and over use of unclean equipment. Hospitals should be focusing on attention to rigorous hygiene such as washing ones hands after each patient, not touching door knobs, sanitizing equipment after each patient, and increasing the use of gloves which was standard in the 1970’s until the push to use antibiotics started. In 1974 only 2% of germs were drug resistant, now more than 63% are resistant.

Hospitals must understand decreasing the cause of infections is a win-win for them as making their patients better also eliminates a large time and financial waste from their end. Seniors and other professionals in the health care industry should voice their strong opinion in supporting measures to require hospitals to report and track infections each year. The sooner we start focusing on a solution the sooner you will not have to worry about being the one person in 24 that will get an infection.