Patient safety advocates: Hospitals withhold info about superbugs

Patient safety groups say hospitals and public health authorities are holding back key information and warnings about superbug risks, according to a report from Bloomberg Business. The recent outbreaks of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae linked to contaminated endoscopes have been shocking to the public, but some critics are wondering why affected hospitals waited months or years to reveal such outbreaks. And the Food and Drug Administration didn’t issue an alert warning about the difficulties of fully cleaning the types of endoscopes involved in the outbreak until after the story broke.

Lisa McGiffert, director of the Safe Patient Project at Consumers Union, told Bloomberg that hospitals should notify prospective patients as soon as they learn of a superbug outbreak. The current system, in which hospitals may notify state health authorities but not patients, is essentially a secret network, she adds. Similarly, the American Hospital Association is encouraging transparency from hospitals when it comes to communicating information about potential outbreaks. 
 
Read the Bloomberg article.