$50 Million In Stimulus Funding To Go Toward Fighting Health Care-Associated Infections, HHS Officials Say

Main Category: Infectious Diseases / Bacteria / Viruses
Also Included In: Public Health;  MRSA / Drug Resistance
Article Date: 03 Apr 2009 - 8:00 PDT

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HHS officials on Wednesday at a House Appropriations Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee hearing said that $50 million from the economic stimulus package will be used to help prevent infections acquired in health care settings, CQ HealthBeat reports. Richard Besser, acting director of CDC, said that the funds "will lay the foundation for a systematic national approach to preventing health care-associated infections," or HAIs.

Don Wright, principal deputy assistant secretary for health at HHS, said that HAIs were associated with 99,000 deaths in 2002. He said that about 1.7 million HAIs occur annually, increasing national health care spending by about $28 billion to $33 billion annually. HAIs are "largely preventable and can be drastically reduced in order to save lives and avoid excess costs," Wright said. He noted that preventing infections and improving patient safety are among the top priorities for the Obama administration in overhauling the U.S. health care system.

According to CQ HealthBeat, $40 million of the $50 million for infection control will be granted to states by CDC for the building of infection prevention collaboratives, including state hospital associations and Quality Improvement Organizations -- which work with physicians and hospitals to improve the quality of care in CMS programs. The remaining $10 million will be used by CMS to bolster inspections of ambulatory surgery centers to detect HAIs.

The National Healthcare Safety Network, CDC's HAIs tracking service, will be used to measure the impact of the collaboratives. Besser said that "we anticipate 10% to 20% reductions in HAIs within two years of the successful implementation of the state-based collaborative." However, he said that reductions in HAIs "are contingent upon the capacity of state and federal partners to quickly ramp up efforts to track infections and increase adherence to prevention recommendations" (Reichard, CQ HealthBeat, 4/1).

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