Hospital Administrators Need to Put Patient Safety Above Profits, Health Expert Argues

Millenson: “As a study of clinician overconfidence in infection control delicately concluded, providers ‘do not recognize the need for training [for themselves] but express this need for others.’ In that context, we perhaps should not be surprised that 40% of respondents to a recent nationwide survey’ on hospital safety culture agreed that ‘hospital management seems interested in patient safety only after an adverse event happens.’”

Millenson acknowledges some push-back, noting that the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America in 2007 made the case that its members didn’t just add to costs but that there’s a genuine “business case for infection control. A dozen years later, infection control specialists still feel they need ‘an administrative champion,’” Millenson writes.