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While the contentious debate over active surveillance cultures (ASC) threatens to shed more heat than light on health care epidemiology, there is a less controversial screening approach that could prevent many post-surgical infections and save hospitals millions of dollars in the process: pre-admission screening (PAT).
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Even as some health care epidemiologists are raising strong doubts about the cost-effectiveness of active surveillance cultures (ASCs), legislators in Illinois and Maryland are considering laws that would mandate the practice to detect methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
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The numbers are in and they aren't good. Data presented recently in Baltimore at the annual meeting of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America document an inexorable increase in staph infections in the nation's hospitals.
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The Veterans Health Administration is rolling out one of the most ambitious efforts to date to control the rampant rise of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
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Hospitals in the United States are under increasing pressure to perform active surveillance cultures (ASC) for detection of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other pathogens among newly admitted patients. Results of such cultures can then be used to direct contact precautions to prevent transmission of MRSA in health care settings.
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Despite existing national recommendations to the contrary, more than a third of hospitals reporting performance measurement data to The Joint Commission are not offering pneumococcal vaccine to their pneumonia patients, a recent report reveals.
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The Joint Commission has created some Q&A clarification of its standards regarding tissue handling and transplantation in light of some highly publicized incidents of inappropriate practices.
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A prospective randomized, placebo-controlled, multi-center trial demonstrates that a prolonged course of intravenous selenium improves mortality in patients with severe sepsis and septic shock and is associated with minimal to no side effects.
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The incidence of invasive infections due to MRSA in 2005 was approximately 100 times greater in chronic dialysis patients than in the general population.
