AIKEN --- Willie Parker could do anything.

His wife of 44 years fondly remembers trips to the beach and mountains, motorcycle rides and weekend barbecues with friends.

Dianne Parker says her husband put down the hardwood floors in the Aiken home they renovated together. He cooked up the feasts for the parties they threw; he tinkered with cars and built three-wheelers.

"There was nothing he wouldn't try," she said.

But then he took a tumble from an ATV, and she said that simple accident started a five-year decline in his health that ended with his death last year.

Mrs. Parker blames mistakes by his health care providers for his illnesses, though she says it's difficult to prove. Even now, she said in a recent interview, she doesn't fully understand how her once vibrant husband deteriorated so rapidly.

But it has spurred her onto a cause -- she's now an advocate for health care and other patients, a passion owing entirely to the concerns she developed about his care and treatment.

"I want quality care," she said. "You don't go into the hospital expecting to feel worse than when you went in."

She's become active in a national movement that urges medical professionals and facilities to be more open about infections and mistakes.

She's on a state committee working on requiring hospitals to disclose infection rates, something they must now do by law.

And she's formed her own one-woman group, offering herself as a patient advocate to support others who believe they were wronged by their medical providers.

"My intent is not to get even," Mrs. Parker said. "It is to protect. You can't get even. Willie's dead."

If she could, she said, she'd do many things differently when her husband first became ill. But she believes hospitals and doctors should be more responsible in being upfront with patients and more careful about explaining the risks of surgeries and giving alternative options.

State officials are listening. Legislators passed the Hospital Infection Disclosure Act last year, which requires hospitals to report how many patients acquire certain types of infections -- such as staph -- at their facilities.

Mrs. Parker is on a 31-member committee run by the state Department of Health and Environmental Control that's helping move that reporting process along.

Hospitals will disclose the rates for the first time in February, publicizing how many patients acquire infections because of hospital care after being admitted.

Dr. Jerry Gibson, the director of DHEC's bureau of disease control, said the committee has accomplished a great deal in the past few months, including setting up the reporting system and training hospitals on disclosure.

It's important patients know the hospital infection rates, he said, so they can make an informed decision about their health care.

Previous studies have shown infection rates vary greatly at different hospitals for many reasons, he said, but residents will soon get an idea of how South Carolina facilities fare.

DHEC plans to put the infection rates on its Web site so residents can compare hospitals, and it will issue a report later this year, he said.

Mrs. Parker is enthusiastic about making sure that information is public, he added.

"Dianne is a very dedicated and serious person," Dr. Gibson said. "She's very concerned about helping deal with the real issue" of hospital infections.

Mrs. Parker has found others who share her concerns.

During her husband's illness, she reached out to people she found on the Internet, including Helen Haskell, who founded the Mothers Against Medical Errors group, of which Mrs. Parker is now vice president.

"She is very driven," Ms. Haskell said. "And I think many people are, because it's just so unbelievable when something happens because it's the opposite of what you expect."

Mrs. Parker said she doesn't want others to go through her loss or the pain her husband suffered for five years.

"To know it was all preventable," she said, "it just really breaks my heart."