Durbin Calls On Federal Government To Take An Active Role In Reducing Community And Healthcare-Associated Infections

Press Release

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) today announced that he will introduce legislation next week in the Senate to improve the prevention, detection and treatment of community and healthcare-associated infections—particularly antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as MRSA. Durbin's initiative, the Community and Healthcare-Associated Infections Reduction (CHAIR) Act of 2007, follows several confirmed cases of MRSA infections involving students in the Chicagoland area over the last few weeks.

"This legislation builds on what hospitals are already doing and what infectious disease experts and government agencies agree is critical to reducing the emergence of these infections," said Durbin. "We have a national responsibility to improve the prevention, detection, and treatment of community and healthcare-associated infections."
Durbin's measure would require the Agency for Healthcare research and Quality to develop best practices guidelines for hospital internal infection control plans. Hospitals would then be required to review their existing infection control plans for compliance with these guidelines to improve the health and safety of patients, healthcare workers, and the public.

Durbin's bill also requires hospitals to report their infection rates to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Once the data is acquired, the CDC would promote the availability of the data to researchers. Currently, there is incomplete information about how many types of these infections there are, what conditions they seem to thrive in, how often they affect people and how they react to efforts to control them. The information can be used to target high risk areas, identify hospitals that are doing a good job of controlling infections, and do a better job of communicating what we know to hospitals and health departments around the country.

"With better data, it's easier for researchers to learn more about how to treat and, ideally, how to prevent these dangerous infections," Durbin said.

The CDC estimates that in 2005, 94,000 Americans developed an invasive drug-resistant staph infection—Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. In 2005, nearly 19,000 died from it—more than the number of people who died from HIV/AIDS, homicide, emphysema, or Parkinson's.

"We are finding that about half of the infections that end up being treated in a hospital were actually picked up in the community," Durbin said.

Durbin's legislation would introduce a Quality Improvement Payment Program through Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to provide payment subsidies to hospitals for lowering hospital-acquired infection rates. The comparison will take into consideration the different characteristics of hospitals—such as patient demographics and hospital size—and how they may impact the prevalence of infections.

The CHAIR Act of 2007 would also:

• Create a grant program for states to carry out a public awareness campaign to educate and increase awareness of reducing and preventing these infections, especially in schools and other local facilities.

• Authorize additional funding at the National Institutes of Health for the establishment of new research programs, or enhancement of existing research programs, that focus on infections.

• Create an interagency working group to discuss and coordinate a comprehensive federal effort to reduce and prevent healthcare-associated infections.

• Request a Government Accountability Office report on the impact of this Act on (1) the prevalence of healthcare associated infections and (2) the quality and availability of data about healthcare associated infections.

Source