06.12.16
Current systems missing new hospital infections, APPG report warns
New healthcare-acquired infections (HCAIs) are being missed by current surveillance systems, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Patient Safety warned in its final report.
According to the report, “a number of increasingly concerning” HCAIs, including CPE, fall outside the scope of routine surveillance and monitoring programmes and are not fully understood by clinical staff and policy makers.
The APPG recommended expanding surveillance, making awareness of new infections crucial to training medical staff, and ensuring that all CQC inspectors seek assurance from hospitals that their testing and reporting algorithms are accurate.
Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, which provided the secretariat for the APPG, said that patients’ safety was “being compromised” without proper assurance from the CQC about HCAIs.
The report cautioned against “complacency” in healthcare organisations, and urged them to adopt a “zero tolerance” attitude regarding HCAIs and surgical site infections (SSIs).
It also recommended publishing infection statistics for each hospital online; working with patients, families and visitors to ensure that infection control protocols were followed; and ensuring standardised best practice across the country, accompanied by access to the right equipment and consumables; and introducing an infection control covenant across the health system.
In addition, the report called for stricter prescription practices to reduce anti-microbial resistance.
In her foreword to the report, Professor Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, warned of the extent of the problem, saying: “We are in the midst of a perilous crisis that could return the medical world to a long forgotten era of even basic procedures becoming complex and hazardous.
“The threat of anti-microbial resistance (AMR) is nothing short of cataclysmic for medical science – not only in the UK, but for every country, in every continent and for every individual.”
The APPG found that, despite efforts to cut antibiotic prescription, there was still a lack of clear clinical guidance on the matter, and some GPs said they felt pressured to prescribe more antibiotics to satisfy patients. The latest figures from Public Health England show a decline in antibiotic resistance across all sectors for the first time.
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