Texans in dark about hospital infections

Although the Texas Legislature have approved a bill to create a state Infection Reporting System, lawmakers failed to provide any money for it. As a result, Texas hospitals are still not required to keep statistics or report them to the state. The system, which was supposed to launch June 1, would collect data on surgical-site infections, certain bloodstream infections and respiratory infections. The information would eventually be made public on the Internet, but officials estimate that they need $1 million to get the system going. Although a committee is talking about the kinds of data hospitals should collect and how they should report it, the program's fate remains unknown.