MRSA specialists tackle ‘worst’ hospitals
UK - Although the Department of Health (DoH) demanded a 50% reduction in MRSA cases in hospitals by 2008, a report at the end of 2005 suggested that some hospitals were making poor progress towards this goal.
As a result, specialist teams are visiting the ‘worst performing’ hospitals - in 20 of the country’s National Health Service (NHS) Trusts (half the total number of Trusts) to analyse why those hospitals have not reduced MRSA cases. Then the team will develop practical action plans, try to implement them, and organise management and support tactics to bring about long-term improvement. Their work will span all of 2006.
All NHS Trusts must report the number of MRSA bloodstream infections and publish figures every six months. From October 2004 to September 2005, almost 7,270 MRSA bloodstream infections occurred in UK hospitals. However, individual Trust figures might not actually reflect the true number of serious infections acquired in each hospital, because patients are frequently transferred between the Trusts.
It was pointed out that MRSA only affected a very small fraction of the 12 million in-patients in NHS hospitals annually, and that better monitoring resulted in more cases being reported.
This article was published on 05/01/2006