Every Day about one in every 25 U.S. patients will suffer from an infection picked up during a hospital visit.
Recent studies show that hospital-related infections have been on the decline in recent years, but there is still plenty of room for improvement, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) news release reported.
"Although there has been some progress, today and every day, more than 200 Americans with healthcare-associated infections will die during their hospital stay," CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H., said in the news release. "The most advanced medical care won't work if clinicians don't prevent infections through basic things such as regular hand hygiene. Health care workers want the best for their patients; following standard infection control practices every time will help ensure their patients' safety."
In 2011 about 721,800 infections occurred in 648,000 hospital patients. The most common hospital-related infections were; "pneumonia (22 percent), surgical site infections (22 percent), gastrointestinal infections (17 percent), urinary tract infections (13 percent), and bloodstream infections (10 percent)," the news release reported.
The most common bacteria causing these healthcare-related infections were "C. difficile (12 percent), Staphylococcus aureus, including MRSA (11 percent), Klebsiella (10 percent), E. coli ([nine] percent), Enterococcus ([nine] percent), and Pseudomonas ([seven] percent)," the news release reported.
Between 2008 and 2012 there was a 44 percent decrease in central-line related infections; a four percent decrease in "hospital-onset MRSA" between 2011 and 2012; and a two percent decrease in hospital-onset C. difficile infections during the same years.
"Our nation is making progress in preventing healthcare-associated infections through three main mechanisms: financial incentives to improve quality, performance measures and public reporting to improve transparency, and the spreading and scaling of effective interventions," Patrick Conway, M.D., Deputy Administrator for Innovation and Quality for Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and CMS chief medical officer, said in the news release. "This progress represents thousands of lives saved, prevented patient harm, and the associated reduction in costs across our nation."
