Marketplace

Dirty Hospitals (39x11)

Air date: Mar 23, 2012

Canada has the highest rate of hospital acquired infections in the developed world, and Canada's consumer watchdog wants to know why. Erica Johnson puts hospital cleanliness to the test, and finds a mess that is making you sick. With hidden cameras, including Canada's first hidden camera glo gel test, insider interviews and expert opinions, Marketplace uncovers why people in Canadian hospitals are too often getting sicker instead of better. Note: Marketplace went inside eleven hospitals in Ontario and British Columbia. We decided to only name the Niagara region hospitals because that is where there was a major C. difficile outbreak last year, that is where Gary Ball died, and those are the hospitals Dr. Kevin Smith supervises. We didn't name the other hospitals, because it would be unfair as we didn't ask hospital representatives to speak to us on camera. They were illustrative of dirty hospitals across the country. As Dr. Michael Gardam says in our story, "I would suggest you could probably find examples of this in pretty much every hospital in the country."