Critical: disclosing hospital-infection rates.(View point: the consumers union perspective)

Hospital-acquired infections affect about 1 in 20 hospital patients, according to a report from the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences. Such infections add almost $5 billion a year to our nation's health-care bill. More people die from such infections than from auto accidents and homicides combined.

James Lee, of Fort Wayne, Ind., was among the roughly 90,000 Americans who die each year from a hospital-acquired infection. Lee went into the hospital for chemotherapy in January 2002. There, he developed a staph infection. Despite antibiotics and isolation, he died in less than three weeks, "We were told to wear gloves, gowns, and masks to keep Dad free from germs," says his daughter, Lori Egolf. "I knew my dad was going to die of cancer, but with this, he didn't even know what hit him."

Many of those deaths are preventable. Researchers have found that improved infection-control practices can reduce the rate of in-hospital infection by 10 to 70 percent. Studies of comprehensive hospital programs designed to address all types of hospital-acquired infections have found reductions of more than 50 percent. But though simple hand-washing has been shown to reduce hospital infections significantly, hand-washing compliance rates are generally less than 50 percent.

To increase public awareness and to provide strong incentives for hospitals to more rigorously address this problem, Consumers Union has initiated the Stop Hospital Infections campaign, CU is working to make infection rates and quality-of-care information public.

Many hospitals track their own infection rates, especially in intensive-care and neonatal units. However, the few hospitals that voluntarily report to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or to the agency that accredits hospitals for Medicare ...