Hospitals Managing MRSA -- Lives are Saved

This update on hospitals and their fight against MRSA crossed my desk this morning.

What I learned is that a new test for patients with a high risk of MRSA has been developed. Hospitals can test high risk patients to the tune of only $25/patient. The results are available within 2 hours. While it's not legally required patients be given this test, those hospitals that are using it are dramatically cutting deaths and infections.

Later this year, Medicare will no longer pay for extra services or longer hospital stays required when one of its patients acquires an infection while in the hospital. While there are mixed opinions on whether that's a good step (I happen to think it is), the fact remains that people will continue to die from MRSA and other superbug infections if hospitals don't figure out a way to -- literally -- clean up their acts.

Some 19 states have stepped up their efforts to make hospitals more accountable by requiring transparency, meaning, hospitals will be forced to report their infection rates and numbers of deaths. Those laws are a recognition that patients have a right to know what hospitals are more dangerous than others.

But more than that, patients have a right to be respected, and kept alive, and protected from the harm superbug infections can bring.

This new test should go a long way toward improvement. Lives will be saved.

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