Hospitals and Healthcare

Amid an uptick in Covid infections, administrators, staff and patients are divided over the need for masks in health care settings.

More than 10,000 patients were diagnosed with covid in a U.S. hospital last year after they were admitted for something else, according to federal and state records analyzed exclusively for KHN. The number is certainly an undercount, since it includes mostly patients 65 and older, plus California and Florida patients of all ages.

A deadly fungus spreading at an alarming rate in U.S. health facilities has exposed the broader problem of how patient safety is jeopardized by underfunded and understaffed infection-prevention efforts, experts say.

On any given day, 1 in 31 hospital patients and 1 in 43 nursing home residents has an infection acquired while seeking medical care, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Candida auris, the fungus spreading primarily in long-term acute-care hospitals and skilled-nursing facilities, is considered a serious global public health threat because it can be difficult to detect and resists some antifungal drugs and disinfectants.