If you were going to select a medical center in metro Detroit for a routine procedure, how would you know how well it has performed with healthcare-associated infections? Would you even think to check? Every day, one in every 20 patients gets an infection from medical care, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A common statistic in the medical community is that some 100,000 people in the U.S. die from health care-associated infections, or HAIs, each year, although the Journal of Patient Safety recently put the number much higher, estimating at least 210,000 deaths annually and a likely toll of more than 400,000.
