Thursday, October 16, 2008

New Never Event

From WhiteCoat's blog again:

One study cited in this commentary showed by genetic “fingerprinting” that an outbreak of Pseudomonas aeruginosa
in six hospital intensive care units was due to contaminated bottled
drinking water. When the ICUs stopped using the bottled water, the
infection rates steadily decreased.

If I'm not mistaken, pseudomonas is the bacteria that gets blamed for Ventilator-assisted Pneumonia.  So I wonder if that ICU had to fight to get payment for the illnesses that ensued from the bad water...  Sounds like we need to making drinking water into a never event.

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