On the importance of incentives in hospital infection control spending

Extract: Each year, nosocomial (acquired in hospital) infections affect nearly 2 million patients and cause over 90,000 deaths in the United States alone. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), seventy percent of all nosocomial pathogens are resistant to one or more classes of antibiotics. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are leading causes of hospital acquired infections, and they have proven difficult to eradicate and control. The spread of resistance is ultimately caused by the use and overuse of antibiotics. Antibiotics are effective medicines when used correctly -- as is their purpose. The ability of VRE, MRSA and other antibiotic-resistant bacteria in hospitals to spread is affected by the percentage of people who use antibiotics in a population -- the more that antibiotics are used, the quicker resistance to them appears and the faster the resistant strain can spread from person to person. Consequently, the more antibiotics that are used today, the greater the chance antibiotic therapy will fail in the future.