Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is the most common hospital-acquired infection and a multidrug resistant bacteria.
According to the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, these infections increase patient sickness, mortality and hospital costs.
Although the strains have been around for decades, efforts to address them on hospitalwide scale picked up momentum within the last decade in the Baltimore region.
“We have been addressing MRSA as an issue since 2000,” said Polly Ristaino, infection control coordinator for St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson. “We have seen over the years that the incidence of MRSA have been increasing, especially in patients coming into the hospital.”
It took two years since the invention of the antibiotic methicillin in 1959 for the first resistant staph bacteria to crop up, according to the APIC. In 1972, MRSA accounted for only two percent of all staphylococcus aureus infections spread inside hospitals. Today, that rate has increased to more than 60 percent of staph infections.
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