In the television show The Sopranos, a later-season plot involved the owners of a trash collection company that had to keep the mob boss, Tony, on the payroll in to stay in business. This arrangement persisted for years, until the son of the owner took over and could not understand why he had to let Tony siphon off his profits just to keep the company open.
Similarly, health care–associated infections (HAIs) once appeared to be just the “cost of doing business” for practitioners in the hospital, a risk that patients were subjected to in order to receive the benefits of intensive interventions siphoning off the gains made in the outcomes of critically ill patients. Much like the extortive mob boss, HAIs were expensive, costing as much as $4.5 billion per year,1 and ruthless killers, causing nearly 100,000 deaths annually.2 Much of these costs can be attributed to catheter-related bloodstream infections (CRBSIs), which account for 11% of all HAIs.
Infectious Disease Special Edition - Prevention of Catheter-Related Bloodstream Infections, 2015
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