McCleary MRSA Prevention

LD 1038 signing ceremony

Maine Governor Baldacci signs Maine LD 1038 MRSA bill

June 10, 2009 at 2pm, Governor John Baldacci celebrated the signing of several Healthcare bills. LD 1038 was amongst those bills.  It is a much abbreviated version of the original, but screening of high risk patients for MRSA remains.  It will now be law.  I will work diligently with the Maine Quality Forum, the same group that fought to get this bill killed, to have an effective and comprehensive MRSA prevention plan ready by October 1, 2009.

My hope is to begin screening of high risk patients on admission and during hospital stays on October 2, 2009.  This approach will protect patients from getting a serious infection themselves, and it will help to stop the spread of undetected MRSA in hospitals. Patients with positive MRSA tests will be housed separately from those who do not have MRSA. This screening  and isolation will decrease the possibility of acquiring an infection while in the hospital.

In the hospital we have no control over who we are roomed with.  If we go into the hospital, we trust them to room us with somebody who is not a health danger to us.  If we are roomed with a MRSA patient, that increases our risk for infection a great deal.  We share the same bathroom, sometimes the same phone and other devices in that room.

Hospitals need to prepare for a new effective MRSA prevention program that begins with screening of high risk patients.  I am optimistic that hospital staffs

 will embrace this approach because they KNOW that the infeciton control practices that their hospitals are practicing today are not stopping these MRSA infections.   Active Detection and Isolation is a proven approach to prevent MRSA.

Today was indeed a day to celebrate…a new approach to prevention of MRSA in Maine hospitals.