CDC reports gains in stemming infections in healthcare facilities, but says more work needed

by Ann Withanee — November 18, 2011—A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that healthcare-associated infections declined in 2010, due in part from using CDC prevention strategies that save lives and healthcare costs. Despite the reported successes, however, CDC stresses that more work is needed.

CDC has a unique role in the prevention of healthcare-associated infections in the United States. Not only does it respond to disease outbreaks in healthcare facilities, it also provides healthcare facilities and states with resources to prevent future incidents. In a policy summit at the National Journal in Washington, D.C., CDC staff detailed the reductions that are occurring in infection rates in U.S. hospitals.

“Hospitals continue to make impressive progress in driving down certain infections in intensive care units through implementation of CDC prevention strategies,” said CDC Director Thomas R. Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. “Hospitals and state health departments need to translate this progress to other areas of healthcare delivery and healthcare infections, such as dialysis and ambulatory surgery centers, and diarrheal infections such as Clostridium difficile.”

The data were submitted by hospitals to the National Healthcare Safety Network, CDC’s healthcare infection monitoring system. The number of infections reported was compared to a national baseline. All of the infections reported have national prevention target goals as defined in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Action Plan to Prevent Healthcare-Associated Infections.

Here are some of the findings reported by CDC:

• A 33 percent reduction in central line-associated bloodstream infections: a 35 percent reduction among critical care patients and a 26 percent reduction among non-critical care patients. A central line is a tube that is placed in a large vein of a patient’s neck or chest to give important medical treatment. When not put in correctly or kept clean, central lines can become a freeway for germs to enter the body and cause serious bloodstream infections.
  
• A 7 percent reduction in catheter-associated urinary tract infections throughout hospitals.
  
• A 10 percent reduction in surgical site infections.
  
• An 18 percent reduction in the number of people developing health care-associated invasive methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections.