Hospital blood poisoning cases rise

The number of patients getting potentially fatal blood poisoning in New Zealand's provincial hospitals has hit a three-year high, a Health Ministry report shows.

More than 400 patients - about one in every 300 - picked up a serious blood infection in hospital in the last three months of last year, it said.

The infection rate remained about the same across all hospitals. But in the 15 "secondary" district health boards -- which do not provide the most complex care, such as specialist surgery, so have less risk -- the number of infections and the infection rate were the highest in three years.

In those hospitals, 92 patients (about three in every 2000) had serious blood poisoning.

The figures are revealed in the ministry's latest hospital benchmark report studying figures for the three months to December.

Infections are an important measure of hospital hygiene and quality of care -- they can be the result of failing to use protective measures such as gloves, a failure of basic infection control such as hand-washing, infected equipment or overcrowding.

Of the 15 secondary district health boards, Palmerston North's MidCentral had the highest rate at 4.29 infections for every 1000 patients -- more than Otago, Canterbury and Counties Manukau district health boards, which as tertiary hospitals treat sicker and more vulnerable patients and would be expected to have higher infection rates.

Ministry quality improvement adviser Gillian Bohm said hospital-acquired blood infections were serious and that was why they were monitored.

"They usually hit seriously ill patients -- some of our sickest and most compromised people," he said.

The infections could kill and generally prolonged a patient's hospital stay seven to 10 days. Treating them could also be very costly, she said.

It was not known if the infections reported were resistant to any antibiotics, but the general increase in "superbugs" made hospital infections even more of a concern.

An auditor-general's report in 2003 found at least 11 deaths from hospital-acquired infections, asking if enough was being done to stop them.

Ms Bohm said an increase in infections was an important warning sign, but she was not particularly concerned at the latest statistics because it took only a change of two or three infections to change the rate significantly. Even at the higher rate, New Zealand was doing well by international standards, she said.

MidCentral infectious diseases specialist Rudyard Yap said his board set up a working party in January, after an increase in blood infections.

The higher rate could be partly explained by its unique status as the only secondary district health board that was also a regional cancer treatment centre, he said. Its patients were often more prone to infection than those at other secondary hospitals.

- NZPA