Welcome to Modern Healthcare's informational site on hospital-acquired infections and healthcare infection control efforts. The site will be updated regularly with news and feature stories on infections and infection control. Primary sources will be Modern Healthcare staff reporting as well as stories from other news organizations and reports from government sites and public health agencies.
Antimicrobial resistance is on the rise and without new antibiotics, infections will continue to be prevalent, according to researchers presenting at the Infectious Diseases Society of America annual meeting.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality launched a new Web page on its site focused on healthcare-associated infections. AHRQ has collected various research, tools and links to other resources about infections for the page, which falls under a patient-safety section of the federal agency's site. Infections acquired during medical treatment are a “common complication” in healthcare with a $28 billion to $33 billion cost to the system, AHRQ said on the new Web page.
Hospital admissions for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections are growing along with instances of community-associated MRSA, according to the results of a new study.
The newly added readmission data to the CMS’ Hospital Compare Web site might help hospitals tracking that information, but the consumers targeted by the site still might not find much use for the data, some say.
Education regarding hospital-acquired infections is one of the areas most reduced because of budget cutbacks in hospitals, according to a survey of infection-control specialists by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology.
Fresh from her Senate confirmation hearings, incoming HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius began her tenure in Washington with a rejoinder to community hospitals over their rising infection rates and a bit of funding to spur future improvements.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the availability of $50 million in stimulus resources to fight healthcare-associated infections and improve patient safety, issuing a specific challenge to hospitals to take action to reduce HAIs.
Will health information technology tackle epidemics?
IT vendors and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are working on it.
At the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society convention in Chicago, six health IT companies, working in collaboration with the CDC, demonstrated the potential for having public-health communications capabilities incorporated into their systems and into the proposed national health information network.
GE Healthcare, one of the demonstrators, featured a pilot program to determine the efficacy of triggering two-way communication between an...
Hospitals have made improvements in surgical infection-prevention measures but there still exists wide variation among facilities in providing the right care, according to a new Consumers Union report.
As the federal government seeks to make hospitals more accountable for high readmission rates, the industry has a clear message for policymakers: Don’t penalize hospitals for readmissions that are beyond their control.
A cluster of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections has prompted Massachusetts Public Health Department officials to cite Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center for serious deficiencies in infection-control practices, according to a news release.
A nationwide random data sample on anti-infection practices at ambulatory surgery centers and random on-site inspections of ASCs are needed to assess the magnitude of infection-control problems at such facilities, according to a Government Accountability office report.
Results of a pilot program to reduce methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in hospitals indicate behavioral changes can help stop the spread of drug-resistant bacteria, researchers announced.
Two patient-safety programs intended to encourage collaboration between hospitals in a noncompetitive environment with the goal of reducing the incidence of central-line infections are being launched nationally among 28 state hospital associations, foundations and patient-safety groups.
Hospitals are sharing patients more frequently than they are aware of, which increases the chance of spreading infections, according to a report released at the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America’s annual meeting.
The $150 billion in planned healthcare spending contained in the giant stimulus package signed last week by President Barack Obama can’t come soon enough for some healthcare providers.
First, the bad news: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hospital-acquired infections cause about 1.7 million illnesses and 99,000 deaths each year, while 230,309 Americans have died from chronic disease so far in 2009, and it’s only February. The good news: Both hospital-acquired infections and chronic illness are largely avoidable, and Congress has appropriated $1 billion from the economic stimulus package to HHS for prevention and wellness programs, with $50 million of that amount apportioned to the states for developing strategies to reduce healthcare-associated...
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality selected 10 state hospital associations and three patient-safety organizations to participate in a three-year initiative aimed at reducing central-line-associated bloodstream infections in intensive-care units.
Overall rates of central-line bloodstream infections caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus have been decreasing in intensive-care units across the country, according to a new study.
Industry leaders are calling for more definition and action in HHS’ national infection-control plan, with two influential groups in disagreement on how best to use the data that are collected through reduction efforts.
Providers got a glimpse last week of the latest federal quality standards they will be expected to follow to reduce infections and also to comply with Joint Commission accrediting standards. HHS released its infection-control action plan detailing how it expects healthcare professionals to target six hospital-acquired infections for reduction and possible elimination within five years. In addition, the Joint Commission revised some hospital accrediting standards and elements of performance to meet Medicare requirements as it prepares to reapply for deeming authority from the CMS.
Despite published guidelines to help hospitals establish anti-microbial stewardship programs, some still have not created the formal programs that manage the use of antibiotics in admitted patients, according to a new survey.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should develop reliable cost and timeline estimates, as well as outcome-based performance measures, for implementing its BioSense program, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report. Created by the CDC in 2003, BioSense is an electronic-surveillance system that uses health-related data to identify patterns of disease symptoms prior to specific diagnoses. Last year, the CDC began to redesign the program to improve collaboration with stakeholders and address...
Hospital patients either carry or are infected with Clostridium difficile at higher rates than previously thought, according to a new study by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology.
Anti-bacterial drug use has appeared to increase between 2002 and 2006, and this leads to a subsequent increase in the risk that pathogens will become resistant to these drugs, according to a report in the Nov. 10 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology has launched a consulting subsidiary to help providers combat infections in their facilities.
Hospitals in several states say they’ve successfully reduced healthcare-associated infections through various initiatives, although concerns remain about available funds to keep these programs afloat.
At a news briefing sponsored by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, hospital representatives from New York and Tennessee detailed the steps they’ve taken to reduce various hospital-acquired infections.
The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology are asking providers across the globe to recognize this week as International Infection Prevention Week.
The Joint Commission is preparing to adopt methods from a new compendium of practical strategies for preventing the six most-important healthcare-associated infections in acute-care hospitals.
Hospitals may have an incentive to under-report their healthcare-associated infections and states lack the ability to find out if the number of infections hospitals report is accurate, according to a GAO study.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality awarded a $3 million contract to the Health Research & Educational Trust to implement a three-year program it hopes will reduce central-line-associated bloodstream infections in intensive-care units across the country.
HHS’ announcement of a new infection-control action plan last week is a step in the right direction but by itself is not enough to motivate hospitals to reduce infection rates, industry executives said.
More board leadership is required if hospitals are going to increase their level of performance on quality measures enough to qualify as a top facility as named by the Leapfrog Group, officials for the employer-backed quality group said.
Pieces of HHS’ new plan to tackle hospital-acquired infections were revealed by an HHS official during a presentation at the Joint Commission’s 2008 Annual Infection Prevention and Control Conference in Chicago. The plan, which identifies priorities and benchmarks for preventing and reducing hospital-acquired infections, was developed in response to a March Government Accountability Office report that criticized HHS for a lack of centralized infection-control efforts, said Don Wright, a physician who is the principal deputy assistant secretary for health. HHS is focusing on four infections...
Hospitals across the country are devising uncertain battle plans for a payer-mandated war on healthcare-associated infections and the efforts could prove a financial boon amounting to billions of dollars for some medical-products companies. But whether the horde of new and repackaged infection-prevention products on the market will save or cost hospitals money and be truly effective are still great unknowns, infection-prevention specialists say.
