Health care–associated infections pose a considerable problem in the contemporary health care setting. Apart from causing additional suffering for the patient, making their quality of life lower, and often even posing a threat to their life, they result in major additional spending, which means that the costs that could otherwise have been used to help other people with medical problems, are instead spent to treat health care–associated infections in those who already are receiving aid. This paper provides some basic statistical information about health care–associated infections in the U.S. and supplies a problem statement pertaining to this issue.
Statistical Information
It is difficult to precisely estimate the prevalence of all the types of health care–associated infections across the whole territory of the U.S.; however, Magill et al. (2014) studied hospitals across 10 various U.S. regions and found out that 4% of all patients (95% CI: 3.7 to 4.4) suffered from at least one such infection. The researchers most commonly encountered surgical-site infections (21.8%), pneumonia (21.8%), as well as gastrointestinal infections (17.1%); Clostridium difficile was found to be the most prevalent pathogen (Magill et al., 2014).
It is also important to stress that a study by Lessa et al. (2015) revealed that, while nearly 65.8% of all cases of Clostridium difficile infection were health care–associated, only 24.2% developed during hospitalization, which means that patients often carry the infection outside the clinical setting after being discharged from the hospital.
Apart from the infections caused by Clostridium difficile, researchers such as Dantes et al. (2013) and Suaya et al. (2014) also report Staphylococcus aureus (more specifically, a methicillin-resistant type of Staphylococcus aureus), which often causes often causes skin and soft tissue infections, to be prevalent in hospitals. The resistance of this strain of bacteria to antibiotics makes the disease considerably more difficult to cure, and there is always a risk that the bacteria will develop resistance to other antibiotics.
On the whole, evidence suggests that the situation does get better in the U.S. hospitals. In particular, Dantes et al. (2013) states that the number of cases of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection in the U.S. decreased by approximately 30,800 in 2011 when compared to 2005 (however, this data includes community-based infections). Nevertheless, Zimlichman et al. (2013) assess that the treatment of the five most prevalent health care–associated infections cost nearly $9.8 billion in 2009 in the U.S. (the estimate was inflated to 2012 U.S. dollars). Therefore, it is pivotal to utilize effective protocols and employ the findings of evidence-based investigations (Loveday et al., 2014) so as to further reduce the prevalence of health care–associated infections among patients in the U.S.
Conclusion and Problem Statement
All in all, it should be stressed that the health care–associated infections cause problems not only to hospital patients (who still suffer much) but also to the personnel of hospitals; in addition, because treating these infections costs a considerable amount of money, these diseases indirectly harm those individuals who currently do not have access to medical insurance due to the limitations of resources which are provided by the government in order to finance such insurance. Thus, it is paramount to further research health care–associated infections and the ways to prevent them in the hospital setting.
Therefore, the following problem statement can be formulated for further studies: which evidence-based practices are most effective when it comes to preventing health care–associated infections?
References
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Lessa, F. C., Mu, Y., Bamberg, W. M., Beldavs, Z. G., Dumyati, G. K., Dunn, J. R.,…Wilson, L. E. (2015). Burden of Clostridium difficile infection in the United States. New England Journal of Medicine, 372(9), 825-834.
Loveday, H. P., Wilson, J., Pratt, R. J., Golsorkhi, M., Tingle, A., Bak, A.,…Wilcox, M. (2014). epic3: national evidence-based guidelines for preventing healthcare-associated infections in NHS hospitals in England. Journal of Hospital Infection, 86, S1-S70. Web.
Magill, S. S., Edwards, J. R., Bamberg, W., Beldavs, Z. G., Dumyati, G., Kainer, M. A.,…Fridkin, S. C. (2014). Multistate point-prevalence survey of health care–associated infections. The New England Journal of Medicine, 370, 1198-1208. Web.
Suaya, J. A., Mera, R. M., Cassidy, A., O’Hara, P., Amrine-Madsen, H., Burstin, S., & Miller, L. G. (2014). Incidence and cost of hospitalizations associated with Staphylococcus aureus skin and soft tissue infections in the United States from 2001 through 2009. BMC Infectious Diseases, 14(1), 296.
Zimlichman, E., Henderson, D., Tamir, O., Franz, C., Song, P., Yamin, C. K.,…Bates, D. W. (2013). Health care–associated infections: A meta-analysis of costs and financial impact on the US health care system. JAMA Internal Medicine, 173(22), 2039-2046.