Illinois Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill) has announced his plan to introduce legislation aimed at reigning in superbugs causing hospital infections, including the infamous methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. Durbin's legislation would require hospitals to follow federal infection control guidelines and report their infection rates to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to a a report released last night by the Chicago Tribune online.
Durbin's announcement comes on the heels of a CDC study showing that MRSA kills 19,000 Americans every year—more than those caused by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). While MRSA may be the most egregiously out-of-control superbug in the U.S. and in the world, there are others, including vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), that have permeated the healthcare system. Superbugs have evolved resistance to multiple antibiotics, making the infections they cause difficult to treat and potentially fatal.
Almost 100,000 people die each year from infections they developed in U.S. hospitals, a greater number than those killed in homicides and car accidents combined.
The details of Durbin's bill are expected to be revealed this week, but according to the Tribune, the infection control guidelines would be set forth by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. For these guidelines to have real teeth, they should require hospitals to implement a system of active detection and isolation whereby incoming patients are screened for superbug infection and colonization and then isolated if they test positive. (Although patients who are colonized do not have active infections, they carry it on their skin or inside their noses, sputum or urine, and can easily pass it along to others.) Over 140 studies have shown that this aggressive search and destroy method reduces the prevalence of MRSA and other superbugs in healthcare facilities.
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