October 23, 2009
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced the award of $17 million
to fund projects to fight costly and dangerous health care-associated infections,
or HAIs.
"When patients go to the hospital, they expect to get better, not
worse," Secretary Sebelius said. "Eliminating infections is critical
to making care safer for patients and to improving the overall quality and safety
of the health care system. We know that it can be done, and this new initiative
will help us reach our goal."
HAIs are one of the most common complications of hospital care. Nearly 2
million patients develop HAIs, which contribute to 99,000 deaths each year
and $28 billion to $33 billion in health care costs. HAIs are caused by different
types of bacteria that infect patients being treated in a hospital or health
care setting for other conditions. The most common HAI-causing bacteria is
methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. The number
of MRSA-associated hospital stays has more than tripled since 2000, reaching
368,600 in 2005, according to HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and
Quality's (AHRQ) Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project.
Of the $17 million, $8 million will fund a national expansion of the Keystone
Project, which within 18 months successfully reduced the rate of central-line
blood stream infections in more than 100 Michigan intensive care units and
saved 1,500 lives and $200 million. The project was originally started by
the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Michigan Health & Hospital
Association to implement a comprehensive unit-based safety program. The
program involves using a checklist of evidence-based safety practices; staff
training and other tools for preventing infections that can
be implemented in hospital units; standard and consistent measurement
of infection rates; and tools to improve teamwork among doctors, nurses and
hospital leaders.
Last year, AHRQ funded an expansion of this project to 10 states. With additional
funding from AHRQ and a private foundation, the Keystone Project is now operating
in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. The new funding
announced today will expand the effort to more hospitals, extend it to other
settings in addition to ICUs, and broaden the focus to address other types
of infections. Specifically, the new $8 million in funding will provide:
- $6 million to the Health Research & Educational Trust for national
efforts to expand the Comprehensive Unit-Based Patient Safety Program
to Reduce Central Line-Associated Blood Stream Infections. The funding
will allow more hospitals in all 50 states to participate in the program
and expand the program's reach into hospital settings outside of
the ICU. The Health Research & Educational Trust will also use $1
million to support a demonstration project that will help fight catheter-associated
urinary tract infections.
- $1 million to Yale University to support a comprehensive
plan to prevent bloodstream infections in hemodialysis patients.
AHRQ, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC), also identified several high-priority areas to apply the remaining
$9 million toward reducing MRSA and other types of HAIs. These projects
will focus on:
- Reducing Clostridium difficile infections through a regional
hospital collaborative.
- Reducing the overuse of antibiotics by primary care clinicians treating
patients in ambulatory and long-term care settings.
- Evaluating two ways to eliminate MRSA in ICUs.
- Improving the measurement of the risk of infections after surgery.
- Identifying national-, regional- and state-level rates of HAIs that are
acquired in the acute care setting.
- Reducing infections caused by Klebsiella pneumoniae
Carbapenemase-producing organisms by applying recently developed
recommendations from CDC's Healthcare Infection Control Practices
Advisory Committee.
- Standardizing antibiotic use in long-term care settings (two projects).
- Implementing teamwork principles for frontline health care providers.
A complete list of institutions funded by the $17 million in resources awarded
today is available at
http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/haify09.htm.
For more information, please contact AHRQ Public Affairs: (301) 427-1258 or (301) 427-1998.
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Internet Citation:
HHS Awards $17 Million in a New National Initiative to Fight
Health Care-Associated Infections. Press Release, October 23, 2009.
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/news/press/pr2009/haifunds.htm