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The continuing state and federal mandates requiring hospitals to report healthcare associated infections threatens to outstrip their original justification, raising questions about whether the labor-intensive efforts will result in true reductions of HAIs, warned Patricia Stone, PhD, FAAN, professor of nursing and director of the Center for Health Policy at Columbia University in New York City.
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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services controversial 2008 policy to cut reimbursement for selected health care associated infections (HAIs) has led to some positive prevention measures while fulfilling some predicted unintended consequences, according to an unpublished national survey of infection preventionists.
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As the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration moves deliberatively toward an infectious diseases standard, two paradigms could spell very different fates for a proposed rule.
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The U.S. public health system is trying to catch up with the explosion of infections with multidrug resistant gram negative rods (MDR-GNR) by standardizing surveillance definitions and changing laboratory breakpoints.
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It is safe to say various professionals in healthcare are expected to participate in activities beyond their original area of expertise.
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While IPs would no doubt like to see even higher numbers, one effect of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services 2008 reimbursement cuts is that more hospital senior administration and clinical leaders are preaching the gospel of infection prevention.
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A proposed National Quality Forum measure may standardize the way hospitals calculate their health care worker influenza immunization rates.
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It took polymerase chain reaction at least 30 years (by my reckoning) to evolve from its inception as a promising method for laboratory detection of infectious agents in patient samples to its widespread utilization in diagnostic clinical microbiology laboratories.
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Unless you were bent on becoming a forensic entomologist as a kid, there is nothing worse than pulling back a bed sheet and finding ... maggots. Every so many years, I find an ICU patient, typically sedated and intubated, with fly larvae crawling out of some orifice or wound.
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Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is a serious medical condition associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Thirty-day mortality rates associated with CDI have been estimated to be anywhere from 6.0% to 32.5%, with higher mortality rates observed in older patients.
