Hospital infection rates decline

I know some people who don’t want to be hospitalized because of the possibility of contracting an infection. Well, it looks like hospitals have made some headway into reducing hospital infection rates, at least when it comes to invasive cases of MRSA, otherwise known as methicillin-resistant staph. A federal study looked at nine major metropolitan areas in the United States and concluded that MRSA rates declined about 16 percent from 2005 to 2008.

Many hospitals have adopted new safety measures in order to curb hospital infection rates, and the decline in MRSA rates indicates those measures have been effective.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says there is still more work to be done but that the results are encouraging. The CDC reported earlier that there were some 90,000 cases of MRSA across the nation in 2005.

For more information, see this article in USA Today.

This was posted on Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 and is filed in the Patient Care, Patient Death categories.