A HIT LIST of the nation’s hospital hot spots reveal more than 1700 patients caught killer superbug infections in public hospitals last year.
Golden Staph is a bloodstream infection that proves fatal in between 20-35 per cent of cases and it is used as a key measure of hospital quality and safety. National Health Performance Authority chief Dr Diane Watson says the new figures allow poorly performing hospitals to measure themselves against the hospitals with the lowest infection rates and lift their game.
Patients can also use the data if they are wondering which might be the best hospital to use for surgery but she warns that patients should be cautious about data for small hospitals where a single case could have a dramatic and unrepresentative impact on the hospitals performance. Health ministers have signed up to a target that aims to keep rates of infection below 2 cases per 10,000 days of treatment. The Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane had the nation’s lowest rate of infection among major hospitals with just nine cases and a rate of 0.47 cases per 10,000 days of treatment. South Australia’s Royal Adelaide Hospital had the worst rate of infection.
NEW SOUTH WALES
Four of the five major hospitals with the worst infection rates in the country are in NSW. Westmead Hospital in Sydney had the second worst rate of golden staph infection in the country with 62 cases in 2011-12 data from the National Health Performance Authority (NHPA) shows. But St George Hospital (45 cases), John Hunter Hospital (55 cases) and Prince of Wales (39 cases) also had rates of infection that exceeded acceptable levels of two cases per 10,000 days of treatment. The states best performing major hospital in NSW was St Vincents Public which had twelve cases of golden staph and an infection rate of just 0.9 per 10,000 days of treatment.
VICTORIA
While the highest number of cases of golden staph infection occurred at the Monash Medical Centre – where 40 patients caught the bug – the rate of infection was lower at 1.71 cases per 10,000 treatment days compared to 2.3 at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute. The Alfred hospital reported 38 cases of golden staph infection (a rate of 1.58 per 10,000 treatment days) and the Austin Hospital 34 (a rate of 1.48 per 10,000 treatment days). Three hospitals in Victoria – Peter MacCallum, Goulburn Valley Health (2.7 cases per 10,000 treatment days) and the Bairnsdale Regional Health Service (2.01 cases per treatment days) – all had infection rates slightly above the target 2 cases in 10,000 days of treatment rate. Peter MacCallum treats vulnerable cancer patients who are at high risk of infection but it improved its performance over 2010-11 when it had 16 cases of golden staph.
QUEENSLAND
Queensland can boast the lowest infection rate in the country. The Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane had the nation’s lowest rate of infection among major hospitals with just nine cases and a rate of 0.47 cases per 10,000 days of treatment data from the National Hospital Performance Authority (NHPA) shows. The worst performing hospital in the state was Innisfail Hospital but it treats just over 12,000 patients a year and NHPA chief Dr Diane Watson says reports for hospitals of this size are not reliable because a single extra case can have a huge impact on infection rates. Princess Alexandria Hospital was the worst major hospital with 53 infections in 2011-12 and an infection rate of 1.72 cases per 10,000 days of treatment.
SOUTH AUSTRALIA
The Royal Adelaide Hospital had the highest infection rate in the country among Australia’s major hospitals. Sixty two patients caught a deadly staph infection while being treated at Royal Adelaide Hospital in 2011-12, a rate of 2.15 per 10,000 days of treatment, the highest of any major hospital in the country. The Flinders Medical Centre was the best performing major hospital in the state with just 19 cases and a rate of 0.84 per 10,000 days of treatment. Over the past nine months, the RAH has seen significant improvement with the SAB rate for March 2013 sitting at 1.41 per 10,000 patient bed days,” a SA Health spokesperson said. The golden staph infection rate for South Australia, as at YTD March 2013, is 0.89, a significant improvement from 1.11 per 10,000 days in 2012, and well below the national benchmark.
TASMANIA
Just 10 patients caught golden staph while visiting the Royal Hobart Hospital and another 10 came down with the infection while using the Launceston General Hospital data from the National Hospital Performance Authority shows. The worst performing hospital in the state was Mersey Community Hospital which had three cases among its 22,944 treatment days but the NHPA say data in hospitals this small is unreliable because a single case an have a huge impact on the rate. The rate of infection at the Royal Hobart Hospital was 0.66 cases per 10,000 days of treatment which compares favourably with the hospital with the hospital with the nation’s lowest infection rate – The Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane (0.47 cases per 10,000).Launceston General Hospital had an infection rate of 0.92 cases per days of treatment.
Deadly disease
“If you get one of these infections they are pretty serious, you have high fever, sweat, chills, it goes to the bones and heart valves,” Australian National University Professor of Infectious Diseases Peter Collignon says. “Overall about 20 per cent of patients die within 30 days,” he said. Patients whose infections were resistant to most antibiotics had an even higher death rate of 35 per cent , he said. Golden Staph is carried by lots of people on their skin and in their nasal passages but it is when it enters the bloodstream through a surgical wound or an intravenous drip line that it becomes dangerous. Poor hand washing rates by doctors and nurses and poor management of intravenous lines were responsible for higher infection rates, Professor Collignon said. Some patients such as those recovering from burns, bone marrow transplants immune system disorders, transplants and renal failure are at higher risk of golden staph. That is why NHPA chief executive Dr Diane Watson says her report groups hospitals into 8 different peer groups reflecting hospital size and the proportion of vulnerable patients in the hospital to make the comparison fair.
Laverty pathology 