Hospitals: Infectious Diseases

(asked on 12th February 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the research in the British Medical Journal, Modelling the annual NHS costs and outcomes attributable to healthcare-associated infections in England, published on 22 January.


Answered by
Lord Bethell Portrait
Lord Bethell
This question was answered on 26th February 2020

Preventing and controlling the spread of healthcare associated infections continues to be a priority for this Government and we welcome this study’s contribution to the evidence base.

As the authors of the report highlight, a number of the model inputs are assumptions or uncertain values. Application of appropriate methodology is important in gaining unbiased estimates of the key cost and health parameters attributable to length of stay and mortality attributable to infection; Public Health England is collaborating with academia to develop such methodologies. This will enable greater certainty in estimates of the cost and outcomes attributable to these infections.

NHS England and NHS Improvement continues to work to prevent, diagnose and treat infection appropriately, reducing the burden and the costs of healthcare associated infection in our trusts and in the community and maintaining the low level of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus and Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) infections since 2012.

The United Kingdom’s national action plan for antimicrobial resistance, published on 24 January 2019, includes a strengthened focus on infection prevention and control and sets an ambition to halve levels of healthcare associated Gram-negative blood stream infections by 2023-24.

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