Efforts to prevent hospital-acquired infections at Allegheny General Hospital have saved both lives and money, a physician told U.S. Senate leaders visiting the hospital yesterday.

Dr. Richard Shannon, Allegheny General's chairman of medicine, estimated that 47 lives have been saved since the hospital initiated an infection-prevention campaign three years ago.

What's more, the campaign has improved the operating margin of the North Side hospital's intensive care units by $2.2 million, and earned the hospital another $2.1 million from Highmark Inc. in recognition of improved quality, he said during a roundtable discussion with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn, and Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum.

Mr. Frist, who is a heart transplant surgeon, said quality improvement programs provided a chance for "huge savings."

Dr. Shannon's work on infections has been championed by the business community in Pittsburgh as a potential source of cost savings. A Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council report this year estimated that insurance companies end up paying seven times more for the care of infected patients than for those who don't contract infections in the hospital. Dr. Shannon added that hospitals often lose money treating infected patients, even when insurance reimbursements are greater.

Allegheny General and other hospitals in the Pittsburgh area have been at the forefront in their efforts to combat infections, working in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative.

The attention shows in the numbers collected by the Health Care Cost Containment Council, which has found that hospitals in the Pittsburgh area are doing a better job than their peers elsewhere in the state in identifying hospital-acquired infections.

Highmark has made infections a focus of its QualityBlue initiative, a program that gives hospitals up to a 3 percent increase in overall reimbursement if they meet certain patient safety goals. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center said it would receive $10 million in Highmark payments this year for improvements in infection prevention and medication safety at four hospitals.

The work at Allegheny General suggests that as much as 90 percent of common hospital-acquired infections could be prevented in a year's time if hospitals paid better attention to hygiene and standardized how intensive care unit patients receive care, Dr. Shannon has said.

During a meeting yesterday with the Post-Gazette's Editorial Board, Carolyn F. Scanlan, president of the Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, said Allegheny General was not alone in its commitment to prevent infections.

"There's a sense among some people that hospitals aren't interested in this, but they really are," Ms. Scanlan said.

The senators' discussion with Allegheny General physicians touched on topics beyond infection control, including a plea by cancer researcher Dr. Norman Wolmark for increased research funding to the National Institutes of Health. But Mr. Santorum said the request would be difficult to grant considering competing claims on federal money as well as recent budget increases for the NIH.

"My initial reaction is: We just doubled your budget and you're telling me, 'We're in a crisis because we don't have enough money,' " Mr. Santorum asked. "How much more do you guys want?"

After the meeting, the senators visited the Allegheny County Medical Society on the North Side where Mr. Santorum was endorsed in his re-election campaign by a professional society representing obstetricians. The doctors are seeking changes to the medical liability system.

Mr. Santorum criticized Bob Casey Jr., his Democratic opponent in this fall's Senate campaign, for opposing a bill he sponsored that would cap verdicts in medical malpractice cases.

Larry Smar, Mr. Casey's press secretary, responded by saying, "The larger point of Santorum bringing Frist in today is that Rick Santorum is putting insurance company profits ahead of the rights of victims of medical negligence."

The Association of Trial Lawyers of America issued a statement noting that the number of medical malpractice case filings in Pennsylvania had dropped 35 percent -- from 2,632 in 2000 to 1,698 in 2005. A study published last month in the journal Health Affairs found that malpractice insurance premiums, when adjusted for inflation, were actually lower in 2000 than they were in 1986.