A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows Pennsylvania is making progress in decreasing some of the infections contracted during hospitalization.
The study was published Tuesday.
Healthcare-associated infections can be a major threat to patient safety, but are often preventable.
The CDC looked at data from 2014 and found that most of those infections are decreasing nationwide.
In Pennsylvania, three of the six tracked infections made statistically significant reductions. But some did not. Surgical site infections for hysterectomies and colon surgeries saw only a small decrease.
“Now that we’ve been doing this for a couple decades, the easy stuff has already been done. We’re talking about the hard stuff, the really complicated improvements,” said Dr. Michael Consuelos with the Hospital and Health System Association of Pennsylvania.
He said the state’s high rate of chronic illness makes a lot of patients more vulnerable to infections in the first place.
Consuelos said it will take time for programs, like those preventing the overuse of antibiotics, to help further curb the problem.
