The Department of Health has met its target to reduce MRSA infections but infections due to other causes may be increasing.
Acccording to the National Audit Office, which today released its report "Reducing healthcare associated infections in hospitals in England" the government has successfully met the target of reducing MRSA bloodstream infections by 50% by 2008, in fact MRSA had been reduced by 57% by the end of March 2008.
There was also encouraging progress on reducing Clostridium difficile infections, this had been reduced by 41% (the target was set at 30% by 2010-11). However, the NAO pointed out that there is no national data that captures information on some of the other most common healthcare associated infections, such as urinary tract infections and pneumonia.
And while a quarter of trusts have reduced MRSA by more than 80%, in 12% of trusts there has been an increase in MRSA infections. And 29% of trusts have reduced C. difficile by more than 50%, but in 19% of hospital trusts the numbers of C. difficile infections have increased.
Hospitals "must do more" on infection: BBC, 12 June 2009
Since the introduction of targets to reduce MRSA and C. difficile, the Department has spent some £120 million on central initiatives tackling healthcare associated infections. There have also been unquantifiable administrative costs and local expenditure on the drive to reduce infection rates. These central initiatives, together with action at trust level, have led to savings on treatment of between £141 million and £263 million, as well as reducing discomfort, disability and, for some, death that might have been caused by these avoidable infections, says the NAO report.
It described the department's approach to reducing healthcare associated infections as "effective" and said there had also been a perceptible change in trust leadership on infections in response to the challenges of reducing infection rates.
But once again, it stressed that the impact had not been the same for all trusts.
Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said: "The Department of Health’s hands on approach to what seemed, in 2004, to be an intractable problem, has been successful in reducing MRSA bloodstream and C. difficile infections. This is a significant achievement and a good example of what concerted effort can achieve. Inevitably, with a focused and centrally driven initiative of this kind, the improvements are not uniform across the NHS and we still don't know in any meaningful way what impact there has been on other healthcare associated infections. We have identified a number of key problems that need to be addressed such as: a lack of robust comparable data on other infection risks; increases in antibiotic resistance and poor data on hospital prescribing; and that compliance with good practice is still not universal."