JEFFERSON CITY • Missouri will start publishing past years of data about hospital infection rates on its website, the state's top health official said Tuesday.

The decision by Margaret Donnelly, Missouri's director of health and senior services, reverses a previous policy of removing data from public view that are more than 12 months old. Donnelly said the decision was made in consultation with the office of Gov. Jay Nixon.

The Post-Dispatch brought attention to the practice in a story on Monday that examined the difficulty consumers have in tracking infection rates at the state's hospitals. The state had previously said that the data were too expensive and sensitive to maintain.

Donnelly said the decision to remove the data from the website was made by the previous administration and that her department would reverse course.

"We really feel strongly that transparency is very important," Donnelly said. She said that the Post-Dispatch story raised important issues and that the department "will re-format the data so consumers can access it."

Donnelly did not know how long it would take to reformat the information, but she said the only real cost is staff time.

Consumer advocates had complained that without being able to compare current infection rates with past rates, it's impossible for patients to judge whether a hospital is improving.

"In the age of the Internet, there's no excuse for that, " said Lisa McGiffert, director of Consumers Union's national Safe Patient Project. "The old reports should remain, and they should be marked by date."

Infections associated with health care kill nearly 100,000 people in the United States each year and cost the health system up to $45 billion, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Six years ago, Missouri was among the first states in the nation to pass legislation that required hospitals to reveal their annual infection rates for certain surgeries and intensive care units.