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Rid your facility of MRSA and save money

Nurse Leader Weekly, May 2, 2008

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Hospitals under the belief that MRSA screening for every patient is a pricey, tedious, and time-consuming process might have some rethinking to do. In one year, Evanston (IL) Northwestern Healthcare system, the first in the country to start swabbing every patient for MRSA, dramatically reduced hospital-acquired infections and saved money.

"Not only are you saving the hospital lots of money, you're saving the patients lots of suffering," says Donna M. Hacek, MT, ASCP, technical specialist of clinical microbiology and molecular epidemiology at Evanston. "It's a good patient safety thing. That was kind of the package we needed to sell, and the CEOs bought into it."

Evanston Northwestern Healthcare set a goal of reducing the MRSA rate within two years at its three hospitals. But after just 12 months, the staff decided to take a peek at the data. The results were startling. In the first year, the hospital saw an 80% reduction of its bloodstream infection rate with MRSA.

Editor's Note: This excerpt was adapted from the article, How one facility reduced MRSA and saved money featured in the Reading Room on HCPro's new online resource center,www.StrategiesForNurseManagers.com. Get a free trial membership that will give you 30 days to "test drive" all the exciting features on the Web site.

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