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MRSA bill takes heat at Capitol

From the local Missouri news. It looks like the hospitals don’t like the idea of being watched when it comes to MRSA.

Infection-tracking measure bothers health professionals.

By T.J. GREANEY of the Tribune’s staff

Published Sunday, March 16, 2008

MRSA is responsible for more deaths than AIDS in the United States. The so-called superbug also is causing a stir in Missouri as legislators and consumer advocacy groups sound an alarm over MRSA and health professionals accuse them of playing politics and using murky science.

Rep. Rob Schaaf, R-St. Joseph, recently abandoned an attempt to list MRSA – methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – as a “reportable condition” that would require notification to the state Department of Health and Senior Services, saying he was forced to “water down” a bill he introduced.

“When you buy meat at the grocery, you know it’s prepared at a factory where people have to wear a hairnet and walk through bleach and all sorts of protections,” Schaaf said. “You know, we don’t have that at the hospitals.”

Schaaf is one of a handful of physicians in the Missouri House and a champion of 2004 legislation that expanded reporting of infections in the state. His pending bill, HB 1546, would have required testing for MRSA in patients and doctors, isolation of infected patients and public reporting of MRSA hospital infection rates.

Eddie Hedrick, the emerging infections coordinator for the state, saw several problems with the bill. Hedrick and Linda Johnson, University of Missouri Health Care infection control manager, criticized it in testimony last month at the Capitol, causing Schaaf to pull controversial aspects.

“There’s a lot of politics involved in this whole thing,” said Hedrick, who contends media reports have been “drawing cloudy lines” between MRSA that is deadly and commonplace types of MRSA. He said there are two types of MRSA bugs:

● Health-care associated MRSA first appeared 50 years ago and occurs mostly in hospitals or nursing homes among patients with weakened immune systems.

● Community associated MRSA emerged in the last 10 years and occurs mostly among young people who spend time in close quarters and practice lax hygiene. CAMRSA outbreaks are generally on the skin and result in boils that typically disappear without treatment but can be deadly on rare occasions.

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Grieving family plead for action on MRSA crisis

Why is it that the places we go to for health care still do not understand MRSA and how to better prevent it. When a person is sick we go to a hospital to get better and not worse. Hospitals need to be held to higher standards as this article suggests.

Grieving family plead for action on MRSA crisis

From the Independent.ie News
Saturday February 02 2008

The distraught family of a civil rights activist who died in hospital have called on the Government to act on the MRSA crisis.

Barbara Forde (67), died on December 3, 2006, just over a month after entering Beaumont Hospital for an abdominal operation. An inquest found yesterday that MRSA was a contributing factor in her decline after the operation.

Her brother Kieran Forde said after the inquest: “It is now up to the politicians to do something about this”.

Ms Forde, from Dollymount Road in Clontarf in Dublin, rapidly deteriorated after contracting post-operative pneumonia, MRSA pneumonia (hospital acquired) and blood clots in her lungs after the operation.

Barbara’s brother Dermot Forde, a practising vet, attacked the Government and health system claiming meat processing plants have stricter hygiene standards than Irish hospitals.

He said: “There is more bio-security in terms of access to chicken farms then there is in terms of access to intensive care post-operative units”.

Risk

Dr Brian Farrell, Dublin City Coroner, found that the MRSA pneumonia along with her other conditions: “constituted significant risk factors for the development of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)”. He found she ultimately died from ARDS.

Mr Declan Buckley, representing Beaumont Hospital, established that MRSA was only one of a number of factors that lead to Ms Forde’s death.

In cross examining Mr Henry Osbourne, Ms Forde’s hospital consultant, it was established that Ms Forde had MRSA on November 9 2006, which was hospital acquired, but it was treated and seemed to have cleared by November 13.

The coroner accepted these findings but suggested that the MRSA contracted did not help Ms Forde at that time and Mr Osbourne agreed.

Mr Osbourne later said: “Anything that was going to affect Ms Forde’s lung function post -operation at that time was going to be a significant factor”.

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