MRSA and C difficile superbug deaths at 10,000 a year in Britain

Dirty NHS hospitals at fault

The number of patients in British hospitals dying from superbug infections has reached more than 10,000 every year, according to an expert. The new figure is about 20% higher than the official toll of 8,000 a year. Mark Enright, professor of molecular epidemiology at Imperial College London, said that the real number of those succumbing to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Clostridium difficile (C difficile) in the UK is higher than the government's records show. "I think it is at least 10,000 a year," he said. "A lot of people are never tested for these infections and their deaths are put down to something else."

"Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are now so well established here, we will never get rid of them," said Hugh Pennington, emeritus professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen University and a world expert.

Latest European figures show that Britain's hospitals are still teeming with treatment-resistant bacteria. While strict hygiene measures have ensured low infection rates in other countries, microbiologists here are privately admitting that Britain's problem is so out of control, it will be impossible to prevent the high level of deaths from continuing. The government's pledge to reduce rates of MRSA to half the 2004 level is unattainable, they say.

According to figures from Eurosurveillance, at least 42% of MRSA bacteria in British hospitals are "superstrains", compared with rates of 20% or lower elsewhere. In the 31-nation European antisuperbug league table, Britain lies close to the bottom, with an infection-control performance better than those of only Malta, Greece, Portugal and Romania.

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Australia: More cooking the books in NSW hospitals

NSW Health appointed a nurse whose job was to massage triage data in the emergency department of a Sydney hospital to make it look favourable, emergency doctors say. The nurse, appointed just before the state election, was there specifically to ensure computer data met triage targets, the vice-president of the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine, Sally McCarthy, said yesterday.

This follows revelations in the Herald yesterday that managers at Gosford and Ryde hospitals were so under pressure by the health department to meet targets that some had falsified "time seen" data - the record of when treatment began on a patient.

On the nurse, Dr McCarthy said: "They had somebody looking at that, basically harassing other staff and putting in data themselves. That's not somebody to provide care for patients. That's simply someone to click off on the computer to basically show that patients were seen within benchmark times. It was really just an attempt to get the data looking good."

While the NSW Minister for Health, Reba Meagher, insisted the Gosford case was isolated, Dr McCarthy said the doctoring of data was more widespread and was made easier after the department about 18 months ago widened the definition of when treatment began to include nursing care in several instances. An emergency physician at Prince of Wales Hospital, who could not be named because she was prohibited from speaking to media, said yesterday that "there have been numerous verbal directives from hospital administrators to change data". "This is not an isolated instance. Most other hospitals, and I'm aware of Liverpool and Nepean hospitals being asked to do the same thing," she said. Another emergency physician said he witnessed the same thing at Blue Mountains Hospital last year: "There was a huge amount of pressure . to enter data to meet benchmarks."

Ms Meagher rejected the claims. "There is no evidence to suggest that inaccurate reporting is widespread," she said in a statement. "Hospitals in NSW have been performing well."

Triage data is highly political and used as one of the performance indicators of health bureaucrats. The chief executive officer of Northern Sydney Central Coast Area Health Service, Matthew Daly, admitted a manager at Gosford Hospital had falsified triage data early last year and had been disciplined. "She was altering figures that had previously been entered," he said. He said new recommendations had since been implemented "about the clarity of nurse-initiated protocols - when the clock starts". Mr Daly said no pressure was placed on her to alter data and it was "just absurd to do, and simply dishonest". Another recommendation was to limit access to data.

The director of performance improvement at NSW Health, Tony O'Connell, said it was an outrageous claim that data doctoring was widespread and due to pressure from the department. "There's no evidence that I have that it has happened anywhere else [other than Ryde and Gosford]," Dr O'Connell said. "It's really quite perverse of the college to say on one hand people around Australia should be seen within recommended times . and then turn around and say the department is bullying people to deliver them

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Australia: More health bureaucrats who don't give a damn

They should all be fired

AT LEAST 13 Queensland Health bureaucrats - including the new boss of the Torres Strait district- allegedly received a damning report into staff safety that was left to gather dust. A briefing note prepared for Health Minister Stephen Robertson claims new district manager Cindy Morseu was emailed the Torres Strait Risk Assessment report early last year. The audit report was undertaken in late 2006, 16 months before a nurse was allegedly raped by an intruder in her living quarters on remote Mabuiag Island last month.

The inaction in implementing the report's recommendations and who was responsible have been referred to the Crime and Misconduct Commission. Mr Robertson forwarded the case to the CMC after former district manager Phillip Mills, the uncle of Ms Morseu, denied he ever saw the document because he was posted to Cairns at the time. According to the briefing note, Torres Strait workplace health and safety officer Tom Sanderson claimed the report was sanctioned by the region's director of corporate services, Ashley Frost. There are conflicting versions over events but Mr Sanderson told the department the final report was sent to the Torres Strait in January 2007. "As far as I know it went to Ashley initially as the requester," Mr Sanderson said in the briefing note.

However, the briefing note warns of a lack of evidence because of a policy to delete emails after a certain time. Ms Morseu has refused interviews but Mr Frost, now working for QH on the Sunshine Coast, last night said she was acting manager while her uncle was in Cairns. "I know it went to the district manager, whoever that was at the time, and then it would have ended up at the executive meeting . . . but I can't remember when I would have seen it," Mr Frost said.

Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg questioned whether there was more damning briefing material. "The minister is either incompetent or dishonest so either way people should be very worried and so should the Premier," Mr Springborg said. Premier Anna Bligh said she could not guarantee work to upgrade security measures at centres would be completed before the nurses' union deadline this Friday.

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