Lansley reveals hospital superbug stats
By Sandamali Zbyszewski and Alex Stevenson
Superbug infection rates are being published weekly rather than monthly, Andrew Lansley has announced.
The health secretary said the move was designed to enhance transparency and accountability in all hospital wards.
Previously hospital infection data for MRSA bloodstream infections and C. Difficile had been published monthly by NHS Trusts.
Now weekly data by hospitals is being made available online, with figures between February and April 2010 published today.
“This is an important step towards our broader plans to provide more relevant information to patients,” Mr Lansley said.
“It will enable people to make meaningful choices because they will be able to make comparisons between different hospitals and healthcare organisations.
“We want to make the large amounts of data that are already collected and used internally in the NHS work for patients, not just managers.”
The Department of Health wants to expand the publication of data to other infections, like E. Coli and MSSA.
Eventually, ministers hope to deepen the reach of the initiative by providing data per individual ward. Plans are also being developed to extend the scheme into other branches of healthcare to reveal information on a broader array of infectious pathogens.
