Hospital MRSA - taking local action

If you follow hospital-acquired infections, you know there's enormous debate nationally over the best strategies to use: "search and destroy" versus targeted surveillance; guidelines from SHEA, APIC, CDC, or elsewhere. The competing assertions and the lack of clarity can be dizzying.

Here's news though of one local area that has decided to cut through the fog. A private healthcare organization, state universities and a state hospital association have teamed together to create the South Carolina Healthcare Quality Trust, a partnership that says it will test evidence-based best practices and use IT tools to rapidly distribute them to the 60+ smaller hospitals in the state.

There's not a lot of detail up yet about what the trust plans, so let's applaud the effort while reserving judgment until we see what strategies they choose to test and why. Meanwhile, though, here is the announcement from Health Sciences South Carolina, which is a collaborative of several universities, and a FAQ; a story from the national publication Modern Healthcare; and one from the state newspaper, the Columbia State.