There are roughly 700,000 healthcare related infection reported annually in the United States. The statistic comes from the Kent County Health Department now selected, along with 10 other health departments from across the country, with combating healthcare related infections.
“We identified a need to increase collaboration around a certain type of multi-drug resistant organism called CRE for short.”
What is CRE?
“It’s called carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, so it’s actually a family of bacteria that are resistant to a certain family of antibiotics.”
Brian Hartl is Supervising Epidemiologist at the Kent County Health Department. He explains across the country GRE is an emerging disease and infection and KCHD wants to get ahead of it because it’s difficult to treat.
Kent County is one of 11 health departments receiving a $25,000 grant from the National Association of County and City Health Organizations to test new preparation approaches. It begins with coordination and communication.
“So when a patient is transferred from one facility to another you want to improve how those two facilities communicate with each other in terms of how they’re informed of their infection status. There are so many different ways that that happens, we want to try to standardize that approach in transferring individuals and communicating during that process.”
Long-term care facility staff will be educated about CRE patients and preventing the spread of the disease. The health department will also certify two staff members in infection control.
Patrick Center, WGVU News.