Did you hear this about Medicaid?

[BittyBabyGrower]

They will not be paying for nosocomial infection treatments.....man, won't that just be a shot in the ole budget. We were in a meeting for our practice group and this came up from one of the neonatologists. Yes, we all need to be vigilant in preventing nosocomial infections, but I think that this is a bit drastic!

What do you think?

I believe some of the articles came from www.ihi.org We have adopted their care bundles for infection and VAP.

[RainDreamer, BSN, RN]

We are now swabbing all new admissions for MRSA....if we can prove it is coming over with the kids, then they have to reimburse. We have had several kids come back positive from birth.

We had to do that about a year ago ..... swab all new admissions. It was state mandated.

I don't know what ever happened with it. I think we were mandated to do it because we had such a crazy breakout of MRSA at that time. I can't even remember the last time we've had a kid with MRSA though, it's been a long time.

[elizabells, BSN, RN]

Our unit is more than adequetely staffed, so that isn't it, but there is something somewhere that is breaking the clean cycle and we just have to find it.

Watch the people who go bed-to-bed-to-bed. Consulting services (surg, cards) on rounds, PT/OT, pastoral care, RT. They traced a C-Diff outbreak in my hospital to a single allied-health worker. Won't say what service so I don't get flamed, but yeah.

I've also never been able to figure out a curious practice on my unit - family members, unless they have multiples, are not required to observe contact isolation protocol. Okay, but these same people are using the sinks, bathrooms, doors, family lounge, lactation rooms, elevators... all the while touching stuff. Do families on your units have to gown/glove when their kids are on contact?

[RainDreamer, BSN, RN]

Do families on your units have to gown/glove when their kids are on contact?

Yep, just like everyone else.

[Sweeper933]

Do families on your units have to gown/glove when their kids are on contact?

Yup

When we have babies on any type of isolation, they go into our isolation rooms (we have 4 total - each private - ~50bed unit). When babies are in there, what ever family members are there have to gown/glove/mask when appropriate the whole time that they're there. We also make sure that they wash their hands again in the ante room before leaving to go back to the main unit. When there are multiples involved, and one is in isolation and the other isn't - we have the parents always visit w/ the one in isolation last, and then they are not allowed to go back to visit the other one on the main unit. We've never had parents complain about it, they understand the reason for the policy and they never want their other child getting infected too.

As MRSA goes - the only cases we seem to get are when they come back positive from birth. We screen each baby upon admission, and each baby on the entire unit gets rescreened every Sunday night. Our unit has been doing weekly screenings for MRSA for as long as I've been there (3 yeas) and last year, they entire hospital started doing weekly screens (in addition to the admission ones).

[HeartsOpenWide, RN]

I saw this in the paper a few months ago; they are not paying for any infections or injuries that are acquired will in the hospital....I think this can be a good thing, however, they seem to be taking it a little far, they are even including bedsores....which seems to be unpreventable to some of the older folks......I have a feeling this is going to cause more trouble than good.