April 17, 2012
CDDEP director Ramanan Laxminarayan weighs in on the landscape of hospital infection control in a recent commentary for PNAS. The commentary is in response to a study by Ke et al that shows how increasing patient sharing leads to decreased heterogeneity of MRSA strains among medical facilities.
The evidence points to the conclusion that as long as patients move between facilities, MRSA and other hospital-acquired infections will move with them and will require solutions beyond the individual hospital level. Active screening and electronic health records could aid the effort, as could incentives for facilities to take part in regionally coordinated infection control programs.
Read more (subscription required):
Laxminarayan, Ramanan. 2012. Crafting a system-wide response to healthcare-associated infections. PNAS.
Weixiong Ke, et al. 2012. Patient sharing and population genetic structure of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. PNAS.
