Board members for the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council unanimously approved a compromise yesterday that should allow for the collection of at least some data this year on infections acquired in hospitals.

A landmark report by the federal Institute of Medicine in 1999 identified the prevention of infections as an area in which hospitals could significantly reduce the harm many patients suffer as they go through the health care system.

But representatives of the Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania protested the council's call last year to collect infection data, saying they supported the concept but not the particular method proposed by the council.

The council is a state agency that takes data from hospitals, doctors and health plans and creates report cards that are meant to drive improvements.

Yesterday, both hospital representatives on the council's 18-member board of directors voted in favor of the compromise. It asks all hospitals to collect and report information on four types of infections that account for something less than 50 percent of all hospital-acquired infections. An informal committee will consider whether the council should expand its efforts to other types of hospital infections.

Following the meeting in Harrisburg, Carolyn F. Scanlan, president of the hospital association, issued a statement saying: "We are encouraged that [the council's] action will enable a phase-in of data collection and reporting processes, which will be in the best interest of patients."

But board member Cliff Shannon was far from happy with the outcome.

Board members felt forced to compromise, he said, because going forward with the council's original plan to collect data on all infections would have prompted a lengthy legal challenge from hospitals.

"The hospital association [would have] effectively put a legal knife to the throats of the millions of Pennsylvania patients who are threatened with injury," he said.

"Several years [after the Institute of Medicine report] there's not only no evidence of a general movement by the hospital industry to make patients safer in this regard, there is some evidence that the incidence of hospital-acquired infections has actually increased a little bit."

A representative for Consumers Union -- the group that publishes Consumer Reports magazine and has a national campaign to reduce hospital infections -- also expressed mixed feelings about the compromise.

"While the proposal decided upon today by the council is a step forward, hospitals should be required to report infection rates for all areas of the hospital, not just for certain patients or certain units, and to make this information available to the public," Ami Gadhia, assistant legislative counsel for Consumers Union, said in a written statement.

Pennsylvania hospitals are asked to begin reporting by July 1 data on certain surgical site infections, blood stream infections, pneumonia associated with ventilator use and urinary tract infections. Officials said it's far too early to say when an actual report card on infections could be produced.