California Hospital Assn. seeks to bar infection-reporting law

The California Hospital Assn. is attempting to block a state law that requires hospitals to publicly report surgical site infections, saying the measure places an unfair burden on hospitals.

Hospital officials were required to report the infections starting in June. The state is scheduled to post the rates on its website by January 2012.

The hospital association sued the California Dept. of Public Health on May 26. The suit claims the requirements would exhaust hospital resources and take time from patient care. The CHA asked a judge for the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco, to halt the law's implementation until the suit is resolved.

During a June 22 hearing, the judge did not block the law but asked each side to supply the court with additional information before making a final decision.

The CHA fully supports publicly reporting surgical site infections but does not agree with how the state went about implementing the rules, said Jan Emerson-Shea, CHA vice president of external affairs.

In a March letter, the state ordered hospitals to begin reporting information on two surgical procedures by June. Five weeks later, another letter changed that number to 29 procedures, according to state documents. The measure requires that hospitals report the total number of procedures performed for each surgical site and the resulting number of infections.

The process means reviewing more than 900,000 medical records and potentially hiring 500 additional hospital employees to decipher the documents, Emerson-Shea said. Researching the records must be done by trained specialists and cannot be completed by data clerks, she added. "It's an enormous volume of work."

The CHA also questions the relevancy of reporting on all 29 sites. "Not all of the procedures have the same risk of infection," Emerson-Shea said.

Reducing infections key

Ralph Montano, a spokesman for the California Dept. of Public Health, said the state could not comment on pending litigation.

In court documents, the state said: "The modest administrative burden of these reporting requirements does not even approach the requisite showing of 'irreparable harm' necessary to justify a preliminary injunction against a state agency."

Health care-associated infections are a significant public health issue and the department supports all efforts to reduce them, including complying with all state mandates, said Al Lundeen, a spokesman for the CDPH. Nearly 200,000 patients develop health care-associated infections in California hospitals each year, according to state data.

At this article's deadline, the California Medical Assn. had not returned calls seeking comment.

California enacted public reporting on infections as part of the Medical Facility Infection Control and Prevention Act, approved by lawmakers in 2008. The measure is similar to laws in 27 states requiring mandatory public reporting of health care-associated infections.

To comply with the law, the California Dept. of Public Health created the Healthcare Associated Infections Program, which since 2009 has published several reports on infection data, including bloodstream infections in California hospitals.