William Hackney was known for the dinner parties he hosted at his Shadyside home, where he impressed his guests with his gourmet cooking and ability to play piano medleys of Gershwin, Porter and Kern.

Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Myrna Hackney sits in the dining room of her Shadyside home, where her husband spent the last months of his life. William Hackney, who had been known for his gourmet cooking and his piano playing, developed a MRSA infection and spent his last months in bed in the dining room where he once hosted dinner parties. The Hackneys' story will be the second featured in a four-part TV series that looks at hospital-acquired infections, medical errors and other challenges facing the nation's health care system. The first program airs here at 6 p.m. Sunday on WQED-TV. Click photo for larger image.

But in the two years before his death in July, the music and laughter ebbed from the home where Mr. Hackney, a top corporate attorney, entertained so graciously. His hospital bed was moved into the dining room as the retired senior partner at Reed Smith Shaw & McClay battled kidney failure and infection from an antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria known as MRSA.

"He was basically bedridden the past two years," said his wife, Myrna, noting that he apparently acquired the infection at the hospital or a dialysis clinic.

They are among several patients and family members, medical professionals and others from the Pittsburgh area who are featured in "Remaking American Medicine ... Health Care for the 21st Century." The four-part television series addresses hospital-acquired infections and other challenges that plague the nation's health care system, as well as innovative efforts to address those issues.

The first one-hour program, which debuts locally on WQED-TV at 6 p.m. on Sunday, focuses on medical errors and the story of Josie King. The 18-month-old died at a Baltimore hospital in 2001 after her medical team failed to notice her condition was deteriorating, despite concerns raised by her mother, Sorrel King.

Acting on an idea Mrs. King later suggested, UPMC Shadyside and Children's Hospital created groundbreaking programs to help patients or their family members summon a medical response team when they believe problems have gone unnoticed.

The second program, which airs locally at 6 p.m. on Oct. 22, features the Hackneys and others from the Pittsburgh area and details local efforts to eradicate hospital-acquired infections.

Other programs that will debut here Oct. 29 and Nov. 5 address challenges posed by chronic disease and innovative efforts in other communities to strengthen partnerships among patients, their families and health care providers.

William Hackney in an undated photo. Click photo for larger image.

A premise of the series, produced by Crosskeys Media, is that hospitals are busy, even chaotic environments where patients can acquire deadly infections and mistakes too often occur -- mistakes that sometimes can kill. The series aims to show "what is possible when people confront the problem head-on, and work together to reduce harm and save lives," said co-executive producer Matthew Eisen.

For Josie King's family, that sense of purpose arose from the greatest tragedy.

She was admitted to the Johns Hopkins Children's Center in January 2001 for treatment of burns and was nearly ready to be released when her mother noticed that she did not appear to be doing well. She screamed for drinks and sucked furiously on a washcloth when she was given a bath.

Mrs. King expressed her concern to her daughter's caregivers but was told not to worry.

Medical personnel failed to notice Josie's severe dehydration in time. With her mother at her bedside, she suffered cardiac arrest, which led to severe brain damage. She died after being disconnected from life support, a victim of medical error.

After reaching a settlement with Johns Hopkins, the King family took the unusual step of using some of the funds to improve patient safety at the hospital.

The program touches on those efforts and documents a pivotal moment when Sorrel King thought of a way to help other family members worried about their hospitalized loved ones.

She was on stage at a conference that touched on rapid response teams -- medical personnel that can be summoned quickly in an emergency. Could family members, she wondered aloud, not just medical professionals, make that call for help?

Seated in the audience, Tami Merryman thought the idea held promise.

Mrs. King "deserves the credit for stimulating our thinking," said Ms. Merryman, vice president of the Center for Quality Improvement and Innovation at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

The result is a program at UPMC Shadyside and Children's Hospital known as Condition Help, or Condition H, that allows patients or family members to summon a medical team different from their assigned caregivers.

Patients and family members are encouraged to call when a noticeable change in condition has occurred when health care personnel are not present, or when they believe the caregiving team is not responding to their concerns.

After piloting the program in May 2005, UPMC Shadyside implemented it in its inpatient units two months later. Children's Hospital piloted a similar program in September 2005, soon after Sorrel King made an appearance at the hospital, and has used it throughout the facility since last April.

"Having Sorrel King here was the jump start" for implementing Condition Help, said Dr. Andrew Urbach, interim medical director at Children's, who also credited the hospital's former medical director, Dr. Eugene Wiener.

"There is a traditional worry about giving as much control to parents as this gives them," Dr. Urbach said. "But if you truly listen, you're more likely to provide great care."

UPMC Shadyside and Children's are believed to be the nation's first hospitals to implement Condition Help programs, and Ms. Merryman said officials plan to expand the program to other UPMC hospitals.

Concerns that patients or families would summon the team for minor issues have been unfounded, she said.

Since it began, the Shadyside program has had about 36 calls and the Children's program about 18.

Officials have found that responding to concerns may head off more serious problems, Ms. Merryman said, noting many other hospitals have expressed interest in Condition Help.

The second program in the TV series uses the example of Pittsburgh hospitals to document the human toll and the cost associated with infections such as MRSA, as well as promising efforts to stem the tide.

Among the area residents featured is Paul O'Neill, former Alcoa chairman and U.S. Treasury secretary, who pushed for hospitals to reduce infection rates as chief executive officer of the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative.

Successful efforts were mounted in units at UPMC Presbyterian, Allegheny General Hospital and the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System, which is now leading a national effort to reduce MRSA in VA hospitals. Personnel from all three local hospitals appear in the program.

In general, controlling MRSA involves testing patients entering or leaving a unit by swabbing their nostrils, which can carry the pathogen. Patients who test positive are isolated and other precautions are taken to keep the bacteria from spreading to other patients.

But those precautions are not used in all hospitals in the region, and some have been reluctant to disclose data about MRSA that could help control the pathogen as carriers of the bacteria move from one health care facility to another.

Attitudes are changing, "but it will take time," said Dr. Bruce Dixon, Allegheny County's health director, who is also featured in the program. "It's a very slow process because trust has to be built up."

And the infections continue to occur, the program notes, sometimes with devastating consequences.

Mr. Hackney contracted MRSA in 2004 and it settled in the left of his two artificial hips, his wife recalled.

He was already grappling with kidney failure, which resulted from complications of hip surgery.

Doctors removed his left hip joint in an effort to fight the infection, severely limiting his mobility. Months passed before the infection was brought under control and the hip joint was replaced.

"The fact that he was bedridden so long without the hip made him weaker and weaker, and he became very frail," his wife said.

And eventually, the infection returned.

Mrs. Hackney said her husband was often in pain and depressed, a dramatic change from the days when he was "in charge of everything" and the main cook at their dinner parties.

He had continued to work part time after retiring from his law practice and they also traveled widely.

As his condition deteriorated, "we finally gave up talking about traveling," she said. She purchased a wheelchair van, but he was too weak to enjoy going out.

She said she even stopped taking him to the hospital, relying instead on doctor visits and home nursing care.

"I felt he'd be much better off and less susceptible to infection here than there."

One last celebration occurred in the dining room shortly before her husband's death, she recalled, to mark her son's marriage.

"It was such a happy time," she said, noting her husband appeared to enjoy himself. Two days later, he slipped away.

Though she concentrates on the good times they shared, Mrs. Hackney felt it was important to share her husband's experience in the hope that officials will work harder to curb MRSA infections.

"Just a little swab would tell who would be a carrier," she said. "But most hospitals in America don't do that and it's insanity, it doesn't make any sense."