Copper’s inherent antimicrobial properties could play an increasingly important role in reducing hospital infections, researchers are finding. Placement of copper objects in intensive care unit hospital rooms reduced the number of health care associated infections (HAIs) in patients by more…
The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) and the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) are urging Congress to sustain and increase funding to “detect dangerous infectious diseases and protect the American public from healthcare-associated infections…
Hospitals in the U.S. continue to make progress in the fight against central line-associated bloodstream infections and some surgical site infections, but struggled to reduce catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) between 2010 and 2011, according to a new report issued by the…
Marty Makary, MD, MPH, an associate professor of surgery and health policy at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, is the author of the recently published book “Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won’t Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care.” We…
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is offering a free, web-streamed training course on reporting health care associated infections (HAIs) on October 2-4, 2012 from 8am-5pm EST. The program focuses on reporting and analyzing HAI data through the CDC’s National…
Infection preventionists are all too familiar with the wildly successful program that inevitably loses energy and fades back to baseline levels. That is not the case with the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP), say clinicians who have adopted the approach…
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s national surveillance system for health care associated infections (HAIs) is moving to a new electronic reporting method that should be considerably less labor intensive for infection preventionists. The CDC plans to use the Direct clinical messaging…
As predicted during the ramp up and passage of the controversial Affordable Care Act, infection prevention appears to be one of the clear winners under health care reform. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, all states that…
Once relatively unknown to the public and described in arcane terms like “nosocomial,” health care associated infections (HAIs) are now literally front-page news. A USA Today cover story on Clostridium difficile is the latest example. Public awareness is being dramatically…
Long-term care (LTC) has moved to a top priority in the next phase of the Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) Action Plan to Prevent Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs), with a public comment period now open to review strategies to…