Zigmond Kozicki heads CMU Health Care Administration team campaigning for weekly hospital water testing. BRING YOUR OWN: CMU Health Care Team Advises Caution With Hospital Water
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"Bring you own drinking water if you are hospitalized," advises a university team headed by a former Bay Cityan.
Zigmond Kozicki, of Midland, is leading an area university effort to mandate weekly water testing in hospitals.
Indications are that such an effort, if successful, may result in saving up to thousands of lives a year by reducing patient infections.
A Central Michigan University national survey of 900 hospitals showed inconsistent testing of tap water. Hospital patients with weak immune systems, infants and the elderly are at risk from exposure to waterborne pathogens, according to health authorities.
Kozicki and Health Care Administration faculty from CMU last March called for federal mandates to regularly test tap water to protect patients from infections caused by waterborne pathogens.
So far there has been no reported response from government health agencies about the proposed policy initiative.
"We have a threat to millions of Americans who go into hospitals for treatment," said Kozicki, CMU health sciences adjunct faculty member. "We're calling for action by the government and regulatory agencies to raise the standard of tap water quality in our U.S. health care facilities."
Dr. Joseph Cervia and several New York physicians published a report in the journal "Infections Diseases in Clinical Practice" focusing on the dangers of tap water in hospitals. The report, published in November 2008, concluded:
"Peer-reviewed literature has demonstrated that hospital tap water contains microbial pathogens and that bio-films in water systems resist disinfection and deliver pathogenic organisms to the health care environment. At-risk patients are susceptible to infection through direct contact, ingestion, and inhalation of waterborne pathogens."
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health care-associated infections (HAIs) account for an estimated 1.7 million infections and 99,000 deaths annually in American hospitals. Some of the deaths are attributed to unsafe water.
Kozicki and his team also are looking at how water impacts human health and have made recommendations aimed at reducing the incidence of health care acquired infections for millions of people across the country.
"The control of waterborne pathogens in US health care institutions is at best a fragmented work in progress," states Dr. Cervia's article. "The United States lags far behind Europe in recognition of tap water as an important source of HAIs."
A former Bay City city commissioner and Bay City Board of Education trustee, Kozicki holds a doctorate in health care administration from Central Michigan University where he is an adjunct faculty member. He teaches at several area colleges, heads the Great Lakes Water Research Institute in Big Rapids and and is a psychologist with the Mid-Michigan Neuropsychology Institute, Saginaw.
A national survey of U.S. hospitals, conducted by CMU's Center for Applied Research and Rural Studies, found the frequency of water testing in hospital facilities to be inconsistent. The results revealed the following irregularity of water testing among the 900 hospitals surveyed:
1 percent test bi-weekly
27.5 percent test monthly
15.8 percent test yearly
Patients with weak immune systems, infants and the elderly are particularly at risk for infection from exposure to waterborne pathogens. Each year more than 2 million hospital acquired infections occur in the U.S., with 10 percent resulting in deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"We found very few hospitals are testing for a wide variety of known pathogens that may be in the water, and those that are testing are doing it very infrequently," said Kozicki. "Most, if not all, hospitals across the U.S. are putting patients at risk by not testing water for pathogens."
"The most overlooked and controllable potential source of hospital acquired infection is pathogens in tap water," said Mark Cwiek, another member of the CMU health sciences faculty. "People come to the hospital for care and treatment. They're not expecting to be exposed to something that/s going to make them sicker."
CMU researchers are advocating weekly water testing at a minimum. In addition, they say all health care facilities should be required to have a formal waterborne risk management plan, a waterborne infection response team and waterborne pathogen training for all staff.
In this call to action, five organizations are being targeted to help implement the steps necessary for hospitals to properly test for waterborne pathogens: the American Hospital Association, the Joint Commission, The American College of Healthcare Executives, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the insurance industry.
As general protection from waterborne pathogens in hospitals, CMU researchers suggest the following measures for hospital patients:
Bring your own drinking water or ask for distilled water
Don't use hospital showers, unless they have point-of-use filters
Be aware of where waterborne pathogens can be found, including potable water, cooling towers, nebulizers, humidifiers, vaporizers, sinks, hydrotherapy pools, whirlpools, dialysis water, eyewash stations, flower vases.
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