The CDC's recently published guidelines on infection control and combating antibiotic resistance don't take into account the reality of what's going on in the "trenches", Judy Stone, clinical researcher and infectious disease specialist, wrote in a post for Forbes.
In the guidelines, the CDC puts a heavy emphasis on communication between facilities about patients' infection status. It estimates that better care coordination could reduce resistant infections by as much as 70 percent over five years.
There are a couple of flaws in that philosophy, Ms. Stone wrote. One is it asks health systems to communicate with one another whether or not they want to communicate with one another. The ability of hospitals and nursing home facilities to move and place patients is hindered when they disclose that the patient suffers from a resistant infection, and most facilities do not want to advertise this fact. Another flaw is even if facilities were completely honest about their infection status, Ms. Stone wrote, no standard means of electronic communication exist to guarantee they could do so efficiently.
The CDC also suggests that better infection control and reducing antibiotic over prescribing could prevent 619,000 infections from four types of bacteria, saving 37,000 lives.
While Ms. Stone wrote she supports the types of coordination proposed by the CDC, the guidelines can't become reality without congressional supports and funding. That support will also need to include a focus on interoperable EMRs, mandated reporting on resistant organisms, better antibiotic monitoring protocols and what she writes is the "bigger problem" — the misuse of antibiotics in agriculture.
Read the full commentary here.