Hospitals try new measures to prevent MRSA

The nation’s largest for-profit health system is taking extra measures to make sure its patients don’t contract MRSA, which the CDC says killed more than 9,000 patients who contracted the infection in healthcare settings in 2014.

According to the Wall Street Journal, patients who come into any Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) intensive care unit are first treated with an antibiotic wash called chlorhexidine and are given a noise ointment called mupirocin twice a day for five days. The whole process is called universal decolonization.  

Hospital officials are following researcher’s findings that the best way to prevent MRSA infections are to focus on patients’ own bodies, the WSJ reported. Many researchers believe those efforts can bring preventable MRSA infections down to zero.

One researcher at the University of California, Irvine, Susan Huang, is leading an effort called Reduce MRSA, which was among the first efforts to call for universal decolonization as applied by HCA hospitals.

Some have raised concerns that this preemptive antibacterial strike could contribute to a further acceleration of antibiotic resistance, though so far there hasn’t been any conclusive evidence either way, the WSJ said. Still, about half of HCA hospitals will trying swapping out the currently used nose ointment for a non-antibiotic antiseptic nose swab to see if it could be equally effective and silence fears about antibiotic resistance.

Check out the Wall Street Journal to see plans for other planned studies commissioned by the CDC and the NIH on the most effective ways to fight MRSA in hospitals.